My Little Po-Mo: Unauthorized Critical Essays on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Season Three and Derivative Works

Dear Princess Celestia… (Introduction)

It’s been a long, strange ride.

When I first began this project (about two and a half years ago, as of this writing) I had only a vague notion of where I was going with it. I wanted to write about media, magic, and gender, and in the flush of a new-found fandom, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic(1) seemed like the perfect fit.

Which, in a sense, it was. While I stand by much of what I wrote about the show in that first volume, time and increased participation in the brony culture have ripped away the rosy, utopian view of the fandom I held back then. In the second volume, I endeavored to show the flaws and warts of the brony community, because one of the most damaging of those flaws is the community’s unwillingness to look critically at itself or accept outside criticism.(2)

This book, by contrast, does not directly examine the brony community at all. The reason is fairly simple: they represent only part (albeit a noisy part) of Friendship Is Magic fandom, not its entirety. The novelty factor of men loudly proclaiming their maleness while watching a television show that nearly as loudly proclaims its target demographic of little girls has resulted in bronies becoming the dominant image of the Friendship Is Magic fan. Yet, as we have seen already, there are many fans who aren’t cis men—women, trans people, and perhaps most importantly the all-too-often forgotten little girls who make up the (much larger) target audience of the show.

Instead of ethnography of bronies, therefore, this book takes a different approach to examining the culture surrounding Friendship Is Magic. The first part of the book contains what should be a familiar structure for readers of this series by now: thirteen articles covering the thirteen episodes that make up Season Three of Friendship Is Magic. The second section, however, contains something new: a series of articles on selected derivative works, including both licensed works authorized by the show’s owners and fan-created works which lack that authorization. Finally, inserted into both sections are essays on related topics of the sort that have appeared in previous books, namely character studies of various potential answers to the question Who is best pony? and standalone essays that cross multiple episodes or works.

As always, the approach I take in analyzing the show is a form of postmodern analysis intended to be accessible to lay readers. While I try to avoid jargon or explain it where unavoidable, I do not shy from getting a bit weird when necessary. After all, celebration of the weird is a significant part of the postmodern aesthetic. But what is postmodernism?

Rather than repeat the explanation I have used in past books in this series, I will instead take a different approach by talking about what postmodernism isn’t. Specifically, postmodernism tends to reject the notion of grand narrative or singular truth.(3) Grand narratives are big ideas around which much or all of human experience can be organized, so long as you elide individual and cultural differences. Capitalism is a grand narrative, the organization of human experience in terms of the accumulation of resources by which to acquire what one values by trading with others. Marxism is also a grand narrative, the history of humanity as a series of systems by which the workers are alienated from their labor by a cabal of elites.

Postmodernism does not eschew the use of narratives, only the universalizing of them. For example, a postmodernist critic may well employ the techniques of Marxist criticism in analyzing a work, but then turn around and utilize a different narrative, say feminist criticism, later in the same analysis or in another analysis. All ideas are tools, to be deployed as needed and put away when not.

This approach, in turn, empowers us to look at the ways in which a work such as Friendship Is Magic deploys its ideas. By treating them as tools chosen to a particular purpose, rather than inherent and inviolate parts of some inevitable master plan, we acquire the freedom to dip in and out of the narrative space at will. Regarding Spike’s Dragon Code in terms of what it implies about his character that he spontaneously creates and dedicates himself to such a thing, and what a show that normally adheres tightly to a virtue ethos is doing giving a character a deontological ethos, is one example, and there are many more.

Simply put, the postmodern perspective starts from the assumption that there are multiple valid perspectives, and arbitrarily selects from among them to see whether anything interesting results. I would posit that this approach is a good fit for a show that is explicitly about exploring and validating the multiple, varied perspectives of its main characters.(4)

Acknowledgments

This book would not be possible without the assistance of a number of people. First and foremost is my editor, Lex Winter, to whom I owe any semblance of professionalism or good sense this book possesses. As always, any remaining errors are due to my oversight or stubbornness. In addition, she wrote Chapter 22.

Second are the people without whom this project would not exist: My dear friend and cover designer Viga Gadson, who both introduced me to the show and, when I floated the idea of doing something like this project, strongly encouraged me to pursue this. She also made key suggestions that dramatically improved Chapter 37. And, of course, Dr. Elizabeth Sandifer, whose TARDIS Eruditorum is the primary inspiration—nearly a template—for this work.

Next are the people who made more specific contributions: Frezno, with whom I collaborated on the article about Mega Pony that became Chapter 32, and Nicole Barovic (who gives a shout-out to her family and friends: Alex Hancock, Kim Barovic, Matthew Pollack, Bridget Conley, Marley Lindner, the Young Shakespeare Players, and the MadTown Bronies), who helped push the Kickstarter campaign that funded this book over a critical milestone. And, of course, the Kickstarter backers themselves:

Sam Allegro

Fadhil Anshar

Sergey Anikushin

Nicole Barovic

Chloe Blue

Michael Camacho

Coriander

Lars Engebretsen

Anthony R. Evans

Jessica Flores

Hanyoumaru

Maartje

William McCormick

Nathan Kraft

Ken Passwaters (Tomo)

Phyre Family

Colin Pinnick

J Quincy Sperber

Vijay Varman

Matt Wagner

Susan Smith Webb

Part One: The Show

Chapter 1. I’ve finally figured out why you’re having so much trouble being liked! (The Crystal Empire)

It’s November 10, 2012. The top song—as it has been for more than a month, and will continue to be for the rest of this one—is Maroon 5’s One More Night.(5) The top movie is Skyfall, a James Bond movie, taking the top spot from last week’s surprisingly excellent Wreck-It Ralph.(6)

Since Season Two ended in April, Lonesome George, the last known Pinta Island Tortoise, died of old age; the 2012 Summer Olympics were held in London, England; and CERN announced the discovery of a particle matching the expected properties of the elusive Higgs boson. The week this episode aired, the U.S. holds elections, resulting in the re-election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, defeating challenger Mitt Romney, who at the time of this writing has just been sued in federal court for racketeering; the Democrats increase their majority in the Senate while the Republican majority in the House weakens; and three states vote to allow same-sex marriage, two to allow recreational marijuana use, and one to allow marijuana for medical uses only. In other news, the Syrian civil war continues, with the U.N. predicting 4 million people could require humanitarian aid by 2013, the British government investigates former officials for involvement in child sex abuse and covering up the abuse by children’s television presenter Jimmy Savile; and a corruption scandal in the Russian government leads to the firing of the defense minister and the chief of the armed forces.

In the magical land of Equestria, we have the beginning of new times: the first episode of the first season made entirely after creator Lauren Faust’s departure airs, and it is not a particularly auspicious start. Particularly because it seems to possess an almost entirely different set of issues from most of the subpar or problematic episodes in the first two seasons.

I say almost because the episode’s entire plot can be summed up as a variant on the White Savior archetype, in which one or more members of a European-derived culture (which, as I’ve argued in previous volumes,(7) Equestria is) travel to an exotic locale, befriend the good natives, and rescue them from some existential threat, in the process mastering their culture to a native level or beyond. It is an intensely imperialist story, being ultimately a claim that white culture is superior and has a duty to save other cultures, which are framed as either aggressors or victims.(8) Examples include much of H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ works (for example the 2012 film adaptation of the latter’s Barsoom novels, John Carter), and the film The Last Samurai (2003). A number of reviewers have also pointed out that this narrative is a significant factor in Daenerys Targaryen’s storyline in the HBO series Game of Thrones (and the A Song of Ice and Fire novels on which that series is based), though there is some debate over whether it is a straightforward example or a critique of the archetype.(9)

Returning to Friendship Is Magic, the most egregious example of the White Savior in this episode is the (otherwise quite catchy) Ballad of the Crystal Empire, in which the Mane Six try to put on a traditional Crystal Festival using the information available in a single book. Imagine, for comparison, someone who had never heard of Christmas trying to put on a large public Christmas festival based solely on the Wikipedia entry on Christmas. Failure is guaranteed, and to even make the attempt shows an utter lack of understanding of the culture. True, the Crystal Ponies have lost their memories and the festival is an attempt to restore them in some way, but why is it necessary to do this without consulting any of them? Shouldn’t they have a say in the reconstruction of their own lost culture?

Admittedly, this issue is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the Crystal Ponies have forgotten most of their own culture, and what little we do see—crystal towers, vaguely ancient Roman hairstyles and outfits—seems to be European in origin. Additionally, while the execution is bungled, the idea that a culture needs to retain awareness of its history and traditions in order to successfully engage with its present and evolve into its future is fairly solid. Unfortunately, this is far from the episode’s only major issue—there is a more essential problem with the story, and one relatively novel for the series.

Before we tackle that, however, consider how much went right for this episode. The songs by Daniel Ingram, while hardly his best work, are catchy and entertaining despite the problematic lyrics and circumstances. The role-reversal of Shining Armor and Cadance from their last appearance—in which she is casting the protection spell and he is providing assistance and comfort—is a nice touch that helps solidify their relationship as being mutually supportive.

Additionally, this is a solid character development episode for Twilight Sparkle that continues her evolution as a leader, a process that began way back in Winter Wrap-Up. Here, she learns that she needs more than knowledge and strong organizational skills; she also needs to trust the people around her, delegate responsibility, and put the task at hand ahead of her personal interests, all very important qualities in a good leader.

There’s good humor, some great action set-pieces, and the scene where Twilight and Spike have to face their deepest fears is quite effective. What, then, is the problem with this episode? What causes it to fall so very flat?

In a word: Sombra.

Sombra is, in name and appearance, a shadow, and serves reasonably well as an instance of the Shadow, one of the most influential of Jung’s theorized archetypes. The archetypes derive from Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, which depending on how mystical you want to get with it can be read as a literal shared element of the human psyche that permeates all minds, an early stab in the general direction of social constructivism, or almost anything in between. Regardless, the common element is the idea that there is an element of the human mind which influences our behavior unconsciously, emerging most often in dreams and stories, and which has common elements throughout a culture and even across cultures. Within this collective unconscious, the archetypes are deep, relatively vague underlying concepts which individuals and cultures express through such constructs as the Mother, the Trickster, the Initiation, and so on.(10)

The Shadow is one of the most significant archetypes in Jung’s concept of human development and individuation. It represents the unknown, that which is part of the individual but which they do not recognize, often because they actively deny it. Part of the process of individuation is to recognize one’s own Shadow, but this can lead to possession by the Shadow, which Jung characterizes as a descent into despair, self-hatred, or melancholia—the term at the time for what we today would call depression.(11)

We see this in the episode, as Sombra represents both a collective and an individual denied self. For the traumatized citizens of the Crystal Empire, the Shadow-Sombra represents the terror of the incarnate Sombra’s long-ago rule, and under this Shadow they have forgotten their history and entered a state of emotional flatness that presents quite similarly to depression. For Twilight Sparkle, he represents a more specific internal darkness, namely her underlying anxiety that she will fail the test and prove unworthy of her role as Celestia’s protégé.

But it is, perhaps, for Spike that Sombra represents the most interesting Shadow-aspect: King Sombra is very similar, as a villain, to the dragon from Season One’s Dragonshy, written and directed by the same team as this episode. He is large, not very talkative, creates a vast cloud of darkness, and is spoken of with terror by others (Fluttershy in Dragonshy, and the crystal ponies here). His size and tendency to speak in single words also recall the grown up Spike in Secret of My Excess, which is certainly an aspect of Spike’s self he seeks to deny, to the point of, in Dragon Quest, declaring himself to be a pony.

Unlike the Crystal Ponies, who have been possessed by the Shadow and descended into melancholia, Twilight and Spike both confront Sombra, but to do so they must descend deep into the depths of their unconscious minds, symbolized by the descent to the magic door where Twilight encounters her fear, and later by Spike’s fall off the tower.

So on a symbolic, subtextual level, Sombra works. In particular, he introduces us to Twilight’s fear of ceasing to be Celestia’s student, which will be important at the other end of the season. He also provides a rare opportunity for Spike to be the hero and to actually develop: he defeats Sombra by first taking both the Crystal Heart and the task of defeating Sombra from Twilight, which is to say acquiring precious things, and then giving up both to Princess Cadance so she can complete Sombra’s defeat. In other words, he takes a step toward accepting that he is a dragon and thus driven to acquire precious objects, and by accepting that is able to move beyond it and give them up to save the day.

The problem is that on the plain level of the surface text, Sombra is not a very effective villain. He simply lacks the menace of past villains; he’s big and dark, but doesn’t actually do very much beyond float around and rumble at the ponies. Past villains were much more active, establishing their menace with acts like removing Celestia from power (Nightmare Moon, Queen Chrysalis), stealing the ponies’ powers and turning them against one another (Discord), or placing the ponies into physical danger (once again, Nightmare Moon and Chrysalis). Only after they have established their menace do the ponies find a way to defeat them.

Sombra, by comparison, is first encountered in Celestia’s flashback, which depicts him being defeated. He then appears onscreen as a vast cloud of darkness, which is being successfully held at bay. True, the crystal ponies are terrified of him and traumatized, but between this being the first we’ve met them, and their Shadow possession-induced lack of affect, we don’t know how much to credit that fear. In addition, past villains were given a great deal of personality, while Sombra speaks in one- and two-word phrases, readable as suggesting a low intelligence, which is generally not helpful in making a villain compelling.

But why is Sombra depicted this way? Could he be made more effective by showing him as more intelligent or effective? Unfortunately, the answer is largely no, not without fundamentally altering the premise of the episode.

Consider the past major villains, Nightmare Moon, Discord, and Queen Chrysalis. Nightmare Moon and Discord are classic supervillains, which is to say that they have immense personal power, but stand alone. They demonstrate their villainy by appearing personally and doing bad things to the heroes and their allies, such as banishing Celestia and preventing the sunrise or turning Ponyville into a realm of chaos and corrupting the Mane Six. There is not much difference, in story structure terms, between the two of them and antagonists such as Trixie, Glinda, or the dragon—Nightmare Moon and Discord’s actions are more extreme, but effectively they remain the same, being individuals who create a negative situation for the protagonists, who must then defeat them.

Queen Chrysalis’ role is slightly more complex, as an invader and infiltrator. In her case, the structure is that she is initially hidden and must be revealed, and in addition she has minions who can carry out her commands and must be faced before she is. (Not necessarily defeated, but faced.) Although Friendship Is Magic necessarily avoids the paranoia that usually typifies such stories, it nonetheless follows the standard structure for encounters with this type of antagonist, most familiar from spy narratives.

Sombra, however, is something else. While on the symbolic level he and Nightmare Moon are both readable as variants of the Shadow, on the surface level he is not the Jungian Shadow but the Tolkienesque—the ruler of a dark and distant land who rules an empire of slaves. He is, in other words, an evil overlord.

This is why Sombra cannot work. Sauron is a figure of overwhelming power, who singlehandedly dominates and controls a vast empire. The heroes are massively outclassed by him, and the only reason they stand a chance of success is that they never have to face him directly. Indeed, he never appears onscreen in The Lord of the Rings, and instead only his effects and minions are depicted. The danger he represents is shown by depicting powerful heroes as being afraid to face him and by showing how powerful and dangerous his minions are. The implication is that if the Witch-King is as deadly as he is, how much more so must be the Dark Lord that empowered him?

Unfortunately, neither of these apply to Sombra, who has no minions, is onscreen from nearly the start of the story, and whose empire appears to consist of one town that he is currently locked out of. Both Sauron and Sombra are arguably more mythology or backstory than actively present characters, but unlike Sauron, who is shown creating a vast choking blight, spreading fear throughout Gondor, and sending out vast armies that destroy all in their path, we see little to nothing of Sombra’s effects. The only real suggestion of them is the effect he has on the Crystal Ponies, and once again their general lack of affect mitigates against conveying that terror to the audience. He is almost entirely legend, toothless when he should be a force of nature.

The problem, essentially, is that to be an effective evil overlord Sombra has to have terrifying armies that plunder, pillage, burn, and murder their way across the green fields of Equestria. This is self-evidently not an option in a cartoon for four-year-olds. We cannot see ponies slaughtered, villages burned, or the torments and tortures with which he wore down the Crystal Ponies to their current state. The alternative, then, is to depict him as a psychic menace, which the show does admittedly come fairly close to doing.

There is a reading of this episode in which the Sombra we see is an echo, a shadow if you will, of the original Sombra whom Celestia and Luna defeated. He is a psychic stain, a force of fear and sadness that grips the Crystal Ponies and, now that the Crystal Empire has returned, threatens to spread throughout Equestria through the Crystal Empire’s power, described at the beginning by Celestia, to alter the rest of the world’s mood. In other words, taking the subtext of Sombra as Shadow, and making it text. The problem is that there’s little trace of this in the episode. The magic door’s effect on Twilight is consistent with this reading, and one could even potentially include Cadance’s mounting exhaustion, but Sombra’s attack on Shining Armor doesn’t seem to have any emotional effect, just sprouting crystals on his horn and disrupting his powers. Most importantly, he has no effect at all on the rest of the Mane Six.

Without darkening Equestria beyond what the genre and target audience allow, there is simply no way to make Sombra work as a villain as presented, which is to say as an evil overlord.