Magical Learning – cross post from our new subreddit, /r/magicbuilding

Another ‘Brainstorm’ post from our new subreddit, /r/magicbuilding.

A large part of fantasy stories involve wizarding orders and a system of arcane education. It varies from book to book and series to series – Harry Potter is centred on Hogwarts, while Trudi Canavan (The Black Magician) and Jill Murphy (The Worst Witch) also put their stamp on magical school stories. There are apprentices such as Pug in Feist’s Riftwar series (who studies on both Midkemia and Kelewan during Magician), and Twilight Sparkle in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is Celestia’s pupil and representative in Ponyville.

So in what I hope will be an ongoing series of brainstorming threads, here are some ideas to get you thinking:

• What is your established system of learning magic? Does it necessarily involve formal education, or can a young wizard or sorceress learn to manipulate and control magic on their own?
• Is it an open system, with public institutions such as the Unseen University or the Magician’s Guild, or clandestine, a literal ‘flying university’?
• Is magic education open to the general public (anyone who receives an owl from Hogwarts), or restricted by social class or heritage (such as Brandon Sanderson’s allomancy)?
• Are there magical academics? Are there magical scientists engaged in pure research? Are there non-magical people who study magical lore, such as the societies in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell?

Over to you.

Where I Watch – My Little Pony – Episode 11 – Three’s A Crowd

Chez Twilight, and the mail’s here — YES! Princess Cadence is coming to visit. Twi gets to spend some quality time with her sister-in-law.

And Fluttershy comes in with an invitation to observe the Breezies, rare and magical Equestrian creatures. And in comes Pinkie with another exciting flyer about used patio furniture.

Can this day get any better? I think Pinks is completely shitting them about her …patio furniture.

The ponies see Fluttershy off on her expedition to observe the Breezies at the station, with Pinkie chasing after her and then getting distracted by – LOOK! Shiny!

With Cadence’s visit, Twilight is determined to stop the inevitabilities of the genre getting in the way of their quality time together. She plans to take her to the Starswirl the Bearded museum. Which the ponies have their specific reservations about that particular choice. But Twilight seems not to be bothered about those reservations.

So far, so innocuous. Enter Cadance, to whom Twilight bows as if she’s not elected royalty any more. As sisters-in-law, standing on ceremony is rather deprecated now.

Oh dear.

As the ponies leave the station, they hear a familiar voice. Discord. In cerulean blue. And he’s protesting that he’s reformed.

He’s also sick, sneezing and fainting, and Pinkie gets him a pile of suitcases to recline against. DC has come to ask the ponies – as sceptical as ever – for help. From his special friend, Fluttershy, who did tell him about her trip to the Breezies.

I like Discord episodes myself. They are perilous enough as they are, but they don’t go over-the-top.

Discord meanwhile demands his new friends help him, selecting AJ and Rarity to be his personal nursemaids and distracting Pinks from her attempt to assist. Keeping him away from Twilight and Cadance is their plan, but of course Discord is curious as to why they consider themselves friends but were never that close during the years prior to Cadance’s marriage. Meanwhile, DC’s flu is highly contagious.

We’re about half-way in and we’re still setting up. I get the feeling this is an Overly Long Gag episode. No problem with that.

Oh dear. Both ponies have contracted his sickness. Who shall Discord turn to? And that glint in his eyes suggests he’s being a little disingenuous.

Twilight is cosplaying at the SSTB museum, and they have a friend drop in on them. With Blue Flu. He accidentally sneezes on them; they put up a magical shield up to prevent his sneezes infecting them. And he begs hospitality from them. Isn’t that what friends do for friends? What would Fluttershy do? And so on. Unless of course – you’re not his friend at all.

Ah. So this is a ‘friends help each other out despite everything’ episode. OK. No problem with that; I actually quite like it when the ponies take pity on someone who has been annoying: it’s about acceptance of people who aren’t always the easiest to live with, but can turn out to be worth the effort expended on them. Better than last week’s debacle. Discord slithers back off to the library and settles in.

Cadance decides that they should be able to help him and get back to the exhibit.

Cue song. This is a fun one, which is rather reminiscent of some of the old Disney movie songs, particularly those from films such as The Sword in the Stone. Cadance is more interested in Discord’s welfare, and Twilight

Discord explains how to cure the blue flu – a magical flower picked at sunset. Discord is too sick to go there. But of course Twily and Caddy are able to go there – pulling Discord in a chariot. Neither princess is really a natural flier, which I think is a nice touch in pony mythos.

They get the top – but there’s no flower. Or it’s rather… large.

They say ‘we can have some time together’, but I suspect they are having time together, helping other people.

Unfortunately picking the flower releases a vast, malevolent worm, putting the ponies in danger. This does seem a little rushed and arbitrary, as if they have run out of ways to put together a convincing plot rather than just stringing random elements right out of an avant-garde anime together in the hope that something sticks. Given we’re now 17 min in, there’s a question mark here now as to what his game is.

Discord was faking. He had a reason. Discord wondered whether Twilight was too big for her boots and so he tried to figure out whether she was truly his friend. Twilight is frustrated, but then this is the same actor who played Q, so we’ve come to expect that Discord is the one who has license to play such tricks on her.

Two pissed off ponies. One slightly sceptical blogger.

Cadance explains that she enjoyed the excitement of the challenges alongside Twilight. She got to spend time with her anyway; she might have had a more relaxing time at the museum, but the challenge of getting the flower and dealing with the worm was far more exciting. And in the end, the worm sneezes over DC and gives him the real flu.

I dunno. This one feels nice and cute, but I think it could have been plotted a bit better. It’s not as bad as last week’s. I’m going to give it 7/10, because it’s not bad, but those three marks came off for the ‘could care a bit more about where this was going’ and ‘took too long to set up, with the result that the expedition and conclusion felt rushed’. A better way to do it would have been to set up the sequence at the library earlier and have the quest for the flower feel a bit more substantial. But given that last week’s plot was rather cringeworthy (I see what its adherents like about it, but it still hit me at a bad time), I think this one does deserve a higher mark simply for approaching an interesting moral – spending time with your friends can take many forms and even a chaotic and unpredictable day can be rewarding.

Then Twilight spoils things by refusing Discord a glass of water.

Oh well.

Next week – Weird Al comes to town!

Where I Watch – My Little Pony – Episode 10 – Rainbow Fall

The fat Pegasus from the pegasus episodes last season has a name: Bolt Biceps. (I guess he must be – gasp! – a horse.) And the ponies are now gearing up for the Equestrian Games in the Aerial Whatevers tryout (relay, as it turns out). RD is, as usual, full of self-aggrandising bluster casually concealed by that little cough-cough gesture whenever she falls into mentioning how much she…I mean Ponyville…wants them to make it to the games. With the Sochi Winter Olympics just around the corner, this episode couldn’t be better timed. (And I still haven’t got around to booking the archery lessons I wanted to take both after the 2008 and 2012 games.)

Fluttershy is in on the game. I can guess the ending already. ‘Hey, you didn’t qualify for the games until Celestia intervened! No problem!’

Pinkie is their cheerleader. I can see this being more irritating than inspiring.

And AJ has brought them apple Brown Betties, which BB, surprisingly un-aerodynamic, has started into.

Don’t forget to breathe. Yup, Celestia is going to have to give these guys a bye.

After the credits, Twilight (whose horn seems to have grown slightly since her apostheosis) gives them a few words of, erm, encouragement. The weak link seems to be BB, but of course AJ and Rarity have tagged along, AJ wanting people to ‘carbo-load’.

The other pegasi are discussing  the internal politics, with the Wonderbolts representing Cloudsdale and happy to have some competition…if you’re lucky. And RD wants more than luck. She needs…practice.

And decent cheerleaders.

RD starts off with the practice.

BB can’t stay afloat, Fluttershy needs to be introduced to the baton before she will take it, and Rarity wants to colour-coordinate the baton (in reality a horseshoe which is evidently magnetic for hooves). Not the best start. But this is going to be a success: otherwise we won’t get to see the actual Games themselves in the show, right? And, despite the tone of the series, you can’t really show an episode saying ‘Hard luck, but not everyone wins all the time! It’s the taking part that counts’, because the usual message is ‘It’s the taking part that counts, but actually, since the ponies are the heroines, we have to make them win.’ It’s slightly fairer this time, because these are tryouts and the first four teams win. So it’s not like there’s only one winner. All must have prizes.

Onwards.

Cloudsdale has the Wonderbolts. Sooo, maybe you can learn something. Please?

From Cloudsdale’s POV, Soarin’ can do better. He falls from the sky, and shakes his wing as if he’s hurt. It seems to have got sprained.

This is MLP all over. He praises RD for scooping

BB seems to be a dumb jock character.

Could RD fly with the Wonderbolts? She was brought up in Cloudsdale after all. In order to qualify for Ponyville, she has to be OK to qualify with them. The WBs hint that she was so good at the Academy last season (if you haven’t seen that episode, go and dig it up, because it’s how to do a military episode without actually involving Equestria in World War P) that she could do it.

However, for once, RD is actually being loyal to her team-mates when presented with something a bit better than her …mediocre team.

The WBs are, actually, a little sinister in this episode. Under normal circumstances, Spitfire, who calls her decision wise, should be a little bit more honourable than that, no?

Awesome. RD is not only able to keep up with the WBs, she’s become one of their team.

Twilight, still trying to figure out cheerleading in theory and practice, is a bit perplexed by RD’s desertion.

BB and Fluttershy  are struggling, carboloading, and basically goofing off. They don’t know she’s practising with the team.

I think I know where this is going. I’m not sure I like the contrivance involved in getting there (Ponyville must have more suitable athletes than Fluttershy and Bolt Biceps, even if they made sure everyone else was mysteriously doing other events), but so be it. It’s easier to tell a story, particularly for kids, if you demonstrate the extremes of the situation, rather than the middle range.

Twi tells her that one of the teams needs more help than the others. Ponyville can still qualify, because she can fly fast enough to make up the difference. Then there’s another proposal from the WBs – join our team properly.

The WBs are pointing out the obvious. Even with you on their team, they’re still a bit stymied by the poor potential in both FS and BB. Hmmmmm. These guys are already being made out to be trying lure her with promises of …well, not cake exactly, but the way they’re portrayed is interesting.

So RD’s ego has been stroked. But Twilight tries to guilt her into refusing. Now there is another moral involved: it’s OK to cut down a tall poppy through the 100m extreme guilt tripping sprint. Nice.

RD wants to be the best. The way the other episode with Rarity went, was that the guilt trip kinda worked, but the ponies acquiesced in her scheme despite wanting to do something else. They put Rarity’s success first, and helped her to achieve something, for which Rarity went through hell but won out and was generous in return.

And immediately, we see RD’s way out of the dilemma. She appears in a wheel chair dressed in bandages. (I do hope we’re not lapsing back into G3’s anthropomorphic ponies. G4 has been very good at keeping the characters’ action and worldbuilding consistent with equine anatomy.)

She tripped on a …foam hoof, and landed on a fhfhfhfhfhaasseeeer…

OOOOOOOOOOOH! RD’s illness is so fake.

Fluttershy offers to take care of her. Or somepony will. Or a medic. ERM!

They realise she’s faking it.

Shame, it would have been a pretty decent thing to do, actually. Particularly in response to a rather obnoxious guilt trip, which is meant to be sympathetic but comes out all wrong, as if my correct response, when offered a job, with a couple of unemployed friends, would be to turn it down because my other friends don’t have jobs.

They have a replacement. The Pony Who Shall Not Be Named. (Oh dear. I have avoided pony spoilers all week, not very difficult now I’ve taken a break from tumblr, but…this is going to cause a little bit of outrage, although to be fair, this is putting a bit of faith in The Pony Who Shall Not Be Named.)

Twilight is still on the obnoxious guilt trip. Give over, Twily. I think RD has done an honourable thing, particularly since the WBs invited her to train/fly with them, she qualified for their team and under normal circumstances in athletics Bolt Biceps would be in the weightlifting team. I think the episode is a bit contrived in favour of a ‘look after your friends at your expense’. Having friends is nice, but friends don’t often begrudge another friend their own success, particularly not when most other episodes featuring RD have been promoting her and pushing her to succeed on her own terms. Twilight may be in the right as concerns the show’s overall theme, but she’s being a jackass. When I got a temping job the other month people didn’t say I shouldn’t take it just because some of my friends don’t have jobs and I got one. They were, y’know, happy for me, because they knew being employed, even if only for a few days, was important for me.

Fluttershy tries to stem some of the frustration by promising RD the gold medal if they win it.

Soarin’ is upset his friends haven’t been to see him. It turns out the Spitfire and Fleetfoot believes that he’s not 100% and they were going with somepony else.

Oh, how convenient. So the WBs are also jackasses.

This is a frustrating episode. It seems to be forcing the story into ‘tall poppy BAD, ambition BAD’ syndrome. It’s not the sequence of events, it’s how the ‘sympathetic’ character is behaving, and how convenient for the story that the best flyers, who want to be 100%, are being accused of abandoning a friend who might not be 100%, so RD will go back to the Ponyville team.

There are other, nicer ways to push this message. I’m going to persevere, but the way this is written grates on me like Feeling Pinkie Keen did on atheists and sceptics (so I know how people feel about that episode now). Sports is about competition and being the best. They could put this message across a lot better by using a different milieu, and to push RD to be the best she can in Ponyville while now trying to rein her in because oops! she might abandon her friends! is a little unfair. I get that RD might have had to have this episode, and they had to have a story about a tryout before we got to the EGs, but this is ‘settle for mediocrity in personal achievement because FRIENDSHIP!’ – I don’t like it at all. Twilight could become a princess without incident. Why can’t RD be a Wonderbolt?

It’s worse than ‘Celestia will make it so you can win’.

Oh and now we get RD realising she’s missing her friends.

And the huge guilt trip begins, and the self-criticism session begins.

Fluttershy steps forward.

Really?

And Spitfire accepts RD’s capitulation (after having a moustache-twirling moment which seems VERY out-of-character) and invites Soarin’ to rejoin them. It’s not a bad resolution – Spitfire reacts with pretty damn decent magnanimity – but this just feels like a contrived story to teach a specific ‘tall poppies get hurt’ message rather than anything particularly in character.

And they qualify.

I’ll give this 5/10. It’s a nicely put together episode, and quite exciting and with a bit more action than the last one, which was as dull as ditchwater and shied away from any particular argument. The message and contrivance leaves a bad taste in my mouth. ‘As much as I love winning…’ – why couldn’t she both win and have friends? Like, for example, Rarity, who won off the back of a pony sweatshop and her friends magnanimously sacrificed their own personal entertainment for her victory? Or Twilight herself? ‘Don’t want to do well for myself because friends.’ ‘My friends will savagely guilt trip me because I dare to want to be good at something?’

Why not ‘Want to do well for myself because friends?’ ‘My friends will help me do well for myself and I’ll help them do well for themselves too?’

The way it’s put together is shoddy for the message, shoddy for RD’s self-image, and that’s the second time we’ve seen a peer-pressure self-criticism session rather than a Today I Learned.

I’m not down on the show; it’s just this one episode that feels wrong in the way they plotted the story to deliberately drag someone who was getting too ‘above herself’ down. There’s obviously nothing wrong with sticking to your roots or having friends, but the previous WBs episode, where RD was genuinely dealing with an obnoxious bully was much better from a point of view of an inspiring message. In an age where we want little girls to aspire to better things, to tell them that they can go all the way to the top, a ‘I won’t win at any cost, I’ll stay with my friends and not want to do better’ episode is really out of place. As I’ve said, Twilight got her wings; of all the people who have aimed high and achieved what they got through their own hard work and being the protégé of a demigod, she should be the last person to succumb to ‘cut down the tall poppy’ syndrome, and should see clearly that aiming high doesn’t mean having to abandon your mates. But the way the story is set up, there’s no other option for RD but for her to be sent to the Friendship Gulag.

Maybe it’s time to let Rainbow Dash have her wings properly and not always have her have to learn a lesson about humility.

Not keen at all; not as a lesson for little girls who need to know that aspiration shouldn’t have to mean leaving your friends or your roots behind, and that your friends can be happy if you have something they don’t. Must try harder.

Where I Watch – My Little Pony – Episode 3 – Castle Mania

NB – spoilers! and I watched this and wrote this at the same time. So double spoilers for both the show and my ultimate reaction.

We open with Twilight developing the theme of the locked box, which I totally overlooked last week and has been playing out on Tumblr and other places for a whole week now.

There seems to be a story arc developing here with the next destination on a mega-quest . And Twily and I have something in common (well, we have a lot in common, such that her story could be mine if you squint hard and turn the picture through 90 degrees). We. Love. Books. THIS PLACE IS PERFECT!

We open with another pony image, resembling The Wicker Man. Applejack and Rainbow Dash are competing in the Most Daring Pony contest by surrounding themselves with bees. The beekeeper pony (could this perhaps be the Transformer Pony Bumblebee?) is wanting his bees back. The contest ends in a tie, and Pinkie Pie bounces off to her next engagement, leaving the two feisty fillies to dare themselves into oblivion.

Fluttershy and Rarity, meanwhile, are going for a walk in the forest. Towards the Castle of the Two Sisters, which has a reputation for its tapestries as well as its ancient magic and Rarity wants inspiration. Retro-ancient-classical inspiration.

This is a little …broken up. It seems a little bit like the comics – a bit too focused on set-pieces as yet. It’s good to see, however, that the ponies haven’t lost their well-written characters. So three ponies are at the castle, and three others…are not.

Except they are, because they came to the castle too, for reasons of finding dark magic originally belonging to Nightmare Moon – The Pony of Shadows.

I think they’re trying a little too hard. In trying to get a tapestry down, Fluttershy is catapulted through a secret door and swings round again, hurting her wing. This is My Little Scooby-Doo at its finest. Rarity is more concerned about tapestries than secret doors.

AJ and RD dare each other to stay in the castle the longest and therefore prove themselves the Most Daring Pony. So we now have all the makings of an interesting climax for about three different episodes, except the writers have seen fit to condense it into one. There better be something to make this come together; we’re already half-way through.

Rarishy find themselves in a secret tunnel looking for Angel the bunny. In a case of mistaken identity, they hook up with RD and AJ but as they are feeling each others’ hooves through a hole in the wall, they don’t realise it.

Twilight’s research has found out that many of these interesting elements are ways in which Celestia and Luna pranked each other. The other ponies are getting freaked out. (Pinkie Pie is absent, by the way. I think she would probably add a little too much levity to the episode.) Rarity and ‘Shy stumble on the throne room with its magnificent tapestries.

‘It’s not like it’s going to come to life or anything,’ says AJ of an old suit of armour – and, to be honest, of this episode. It’s trying very hard to be scary, and I guess it might be for little girls who have never seen Scooby-Doo, but actually, having grown up, it’s not exactly thrilling material. You get the impression that a lot of this stuff is trying too hard to work up a scary atmosphere over some mundane aspects. Three-quarters of the way in now and still no obvious antagonism apart from the furniture. AJ is lost, Rarity is spat out of a chute and left to rage at the ‘ungrateful’ castle, and Fluts is still looking for Angel.

RD is speaking for me when she says: ‘C’mon castle is that all you got?’ Followed by a major scream. The castle is falling apart. Spike is still in the doghouse for holding the chump ball from last episode, so of course Twilight thinks he’s being sarcastic. The rest of the ponies are losing their collective minds over a few collapsing beams. Twilight raises the obvious issue and asks what they’re doing.

The only unexplained event is the creepy organ music. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention it. Perhaps it’s the PONY OF SHADOWS?

Three guesses and the first two don’t count. Based on the rest of the episode it’s probably a mundane thing.

Well, OK, it’s Pinkie Pie. Duh!

And she would have got away with it but for those meddling kids.

I think this is a severe waste of a location. I suppose we’ve been spoilt by the previous few episodes continuing the broader series arc, such that a more mundane episode with the moral ‘Don’t let your imagination run away with you!’ and ‘Such and such is helping me cope with being a superprincessgoddesspony!’ has been something we’ve not seen for almost a whole year now.

So the shadowpony is just a myth, like many things.

I’ll give this a 7/10. The moral was fine as a story in its own right, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with reassuring kids that the spider is more afraid of them than they are of it. But after a whizz-bang start to the series, and as an adult fan of fantasy literature where most stories are myth arcs rather than needing to puncture the serious-business aspect for much of a series, it was a bit of a climb-down from recent form. Having said that, sometimes we all need reminded not to let our imaginations run away with us. When there’s big stuff brewing, don’t neglect the little stuff. In that regard, I need to give it a reasonable mark, because I let myself get caught up in the need for action adventure every week while forgetting the reason My Little Pony exists in the first place – to scare the bejeezus out of little kids and then reassure them that everything’s OK; sometimes the shadow on the wall is just a shadow. The suspense lacking for me as an adult would be more intense for the show’s target demographic. In a way, we adult fans sometimes make the show become something it’s not.

It’s not the show’s fault; it’s mine. I think next week I’ll be back to approaching and appreciating the show as a kid’s cartoon rather than something that has recently taken on the import of Lord of the Rings.

Where I Watch – Season 4 of MLP – Episode 1-2. WARNING SPOILERS

I did promise a Where I Watch of Season 4. Here it is. WARNING – SPOILERS. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I don’t know if it’s everypony’s dream…  – Rainbow Dash

The Mane 6 are back, and they’re just as scatter-brained as ever. People were worried that Twilight Sparkle’s new royal status would spoil the plot, but the first few minutes of the episode suggest that Lauren Faust’s dream is still alive and kicking. Twilight is nervous about the ceremonies and duties that are keeping her in Canterlot, while the rest of the Mane 6 have gone back to Ponyville, and has a hard choice – stay in Canterlot or go back and risk the inevitable problems of travel. She chooses to stay and face up to what her job depends on.

However, with Celestia being her usual rather manipulative self, there’s definitely a spanner in the works here somewhere. The expression ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ springs to mind. Given this is a two-parter, there’s a mystical evil lurking somewhere. And of course Twilight is the go-to pony to explain everything about the sudden disappearance of Princess Luna and Princess Celestia.

After Tia’s nostalgic speech about the Summer Sun festival, that seems pretty inevitable. (Gee, guys, this season premieres in November. Can you rub it in a little bit more, please? My SAD is kicking in something chronic and you just drop the hint that it’s midsummer…)

And Twily is in a position of political and administrative power. Meanwhile the Everfree Forest has …escaped and is smothering Ponyville with malicious tentacly roots. I’m liking this a lot, because most programmes of this sort are a bashful princess relinquishing power because she wants to be with her friends. Twilight actually has some authority in the situation, and a responsibility to many more ponies than just her friends, and she can wield it without the long agonising speeches about a difference in status from her friends. She earned her promotion, and after a montage of the Mane 5 and CMC dealing with the encroaching tentacles, I’m sure we’ll see her leaping into action with her Checklist of Rainbow Might and Elements of Bureaucracy.

And her wings. INCOMING!!!

If only it were that simple. If all what was needed was to use the Elements of Harmony, summon Discord, accuse him of the ponynapping and the chaos of the Everfree forest, and get him to put things right. But we’ve still got half an hour to go. And Discord is protesting his innocence, and of course although there’s a problem trusting him, there’s a method to this madness. Fluttershy insists he’s innocent. So, after a bit of a lesson in ‘giving the people who claim to have reformed the benefit of the doubt’ it’s off to Zecora.

Zecora gives Twilight Sparkle a tip – only alicorn magic can put things to rights. Of course :D. (Plot hole number one – where’s Cadance?) Twily is given a potion to show her what she needs to do.

What follows is…well, spoilers. In a trance, Twilight confronts Luna. Unfortunately, it seems the moon princess has gone into a bit of a huff about Twilight’s promotion and is reverting to her old ways. In the process, she turns back into Nightmare Moon.

Well, I didn’t see that coming.

(Round about here we start Episode 2, though I’m watching a continuous stream on YouTube.)

Luna/NM has elevated the moon. Tia won’t fight her – hence the sad speech earlier on – and there’s a bit of pew-pew which actually makes me a little more comfortable about this series in general being less ‘let’s all sit around and harp on about Twilight becoming a princess’ and more ‘let’s get out there and add a few things to our collective Weapons of Mass Befriending arsenal’. Suddenly we’re confronted by an ornery Luna seemingly angry with Twilight Sparkle and attacking Celestia; the scene ends with the vengeance of Tia and the raising of a past form of the Elements of Harmony, which sends Nightmare Moon catapulted towards the moon with indecent haste.

Twilight has been in a trance and has just had a vision of Celestia originally banishing Luna/NM to the moon; however, it doesn’t seem to have given her any insight into the current situation. Then in another vision, Luna and Tia are there to confront Discord themselves. So that’s one problem solved. Twily also sees the original petrification of Discord.

Essentially this is a history lesson – understanding the Elements of Harmony, hanging from the Tree of Harmony. It’s this tree which seems to be in danger.

This is quite a confusing part of the episode. Nevertheless, Twilight has learned she needs to face things alongside her friends. There are very few let-ups in the comedy of the animation, and it’s never forgotten that Twilight is still not comfortable with her wings.

‘Eventually’ isn’t soon enough – and her friends are chafing. Twilight is encouraged to go home to protect her royal status, because with Tia and Luna gone, Equestria needs a ruler. She argues that she’s the only pony who knows what the ToH looks like, but it’s the others who say they can find it just on the strength of her description.

Discord begs to differ. His sarcastic silver tongue makes a few good points. Why should she keep herself safe? Spike holds the devil’s advocate ball here, asking whether she could trust Discord, which I guess is done so that Twilight can vocalise and defend her decision to return to Everfree Forest, but makes Spike look like a chump, distrusting Discord just because he’s Discord, not because his insistence that she returns to her friends actually makes sense and is, ethically speaking, the right thing to do. (This is where I started to wonder who had actually done this, because if Discord was really behind it all, as the plot seems to be intimating despite Fluttershy’s spirited defence of him, he’d be trying to keep the ponies apart.)

Meanwhile, the ponies are a bit cynical about the chances of finding the ToH. Having tumbled down some stairs, they find it entangled in a thorn bush. It seems the Mane 5 can’t function without Twilight, and are not exactly bonding over this – they’re falling out with each other. Meanwhile Twilight is lost and despondent herself, and lucky for her, her friends manage to rescue her from the tentacles which engulf her as she succumbs to her own ill-humour.

To be honest, the episode really feels a little contrived for a story of daring do against evil. Firstly the evil isn’t really defined until the closing stages of the episode, and when it is pinned on Discord, there’s an interesting explanation. As odd as it sounds, maybe that’s a reasonable choice. After all, some problems aren’t always rooted in a specific person. Some things are systemic, or they’re the result of natural phenomena, and get blamed on people like Discord who have previously been scapegoats. As it turns out, Discord did sow the seeds of the tentacles, but he did it while he was bad Discord, at the very beginning of his imprisonment, not since his reformation. And he was part of a gambit to teach Twilight lessons the hard way – as part of friendship. (Hmmm. Interesting idea. It seems a little bit like a cop-out explanation. But then again, Tia and Luna are both known by fandom to be manipulative of Twilight in order to get her to learn. Now they are all collaborating to assist Twilight take on a public persona of her own and work through her issues and dilemmas regarding her new status.

The Elements of Harmony, taken from the Tree, have to be returned to it to save it. It can’t be done with brute force. Twilight and Applejack converse, and work out that their friendship isn’t dependent on the magic of the Elements – it’s to do with their non-magical bond with each other. So they relinquish the artifacts that have previously kept evil at bay all over Equestria – and therefore put their trust fully in each other. I didn’t see that coming, but I guess the show has to keep things fresh and find different ways to combat the evil which occasionally engulfs Equestria.

Considering the overall message of this two-parter, one of the nice things is that TS isn’t just a princess who lives in a castle and wears pink dresses and sits around all day. She’s a working princess with responsibilities and a definite role in Equestria. And she’ll be hanging out with the other ponies from now on while taking on that responsibility. For all people complained about her taking on the monarchical title of Princess, it’s obvious that this is to some degree an appointed/elected monarchy rather than an hereditary one.  I like what they’ve done with Princess Twilight – and it’s true to the values of the show that little girls are being told to aim for public responsibility and purposeful activity alongside wealth and glamour. Twilight can do all that by accepting a position of leadership and rising to the occasion presented to her rather than the sort of humility one sometimes sees in children’s media where in order to be accepted by her friends the princess has to all but renounce her status. When you earn it, you don’t have to be afraid of using it in the public good. I’m not knocking the ‘Don’t call me Ma’am’ school of storywriting, as it has its place, particularly when the status comes from birth rather than achievement. But I think it would have been a cop-out if Twily had insisted on going back to her library and curling up with a book. People – and ponies – grow and develop and sometimes have to take on new responsibility. And Twilight doesn’t actually run and hide from it; her friends’ dilemma regarding her safety is quite appropriate to the situation, which is what makes it a genuine discussion rather than a presentation of a right and wrong answer. Sometimes there are no right/wrong answers; sometimes we have to live with the consequences of an equivocal decision.

I’m going to give it 7 1/2 out of 10. I enjoyed the story, but it was a bit convoluted and there were times when the episode could have been paced a bit better. Tia and Luna’s disappearance isn’t well-explained. Much of the problem with it is the story-telling rather than the actual plot, and the vague notion of evil, although I’ve already explained why I’m happy to see something that is not immediately ascribable to one particular person, and that came about because of prior misconduct rather than the immediate depredation of an all-new one-shot villain like King Sombra. But I think MLP:FIM has managed to keep its unique sense of humour and empowering logic for little girls (and little boys) in this new series, and I think we’re in for a treat with the rest of the season. It’s not overly preachy – which is something I dislike in stories in general, because real life is complicated and full of nuance and intersectionality, and creating absolutist black-and-white morality is not a good idea in general. However, it has a clear message that the series is refreshing itself and can cope with the new parameters thrust upon it by the ending of season 3. With a bit more technical thought put into how the stories are told, I think this will be quite an exciting ride.