Oh, My Pop Culture Pinkie Sense: Science versus Faith in My Little Pony

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic’s Season 1 episode, “Feeling Pinkie Keen”, introduces an interesting conflict into the world of Ponyville. Twilight Sparkle, a scientist and evidence-driven thinker, is thrown into a world of confusion when confronted with Pinkie Pie’s Pinkie Sense, a precognitive Spidey-sense-like ability to sense danger before it happens. Pinkie doesn’t know why she sees these things; she just does, and Applejack and Fluttershy (and, I assume, the rest of the Mane Six, who aren’t in this episode) have seen her twitchy premonitions come true without fail so many times that they consider a Pinkie Sense warning as good as a promise.

Throughout the episode, Twilight becomes more and more frustrated with Pinkie. She refuses to accept that there’s not a logical explanation for Pinkie’s precognition, going so far as to hook her up to a machine to test her, and to stalk her for the day, hoping to learn something or to catch the Pinkie Sense failing. At one point she gets up on an actual soapbox to explain to Pinkie how something that’s unexplainable in that way can’t possibly exist.

A box. With soap. This episode is excruciatingly literal.

Eventually, the evidence that the Pinkie Sense exists and is right 100% of the time becomes so obvious that Twilight can’t ignore it. She has to put aside the scientific method and accept it on faith, even if she can’t quantify it. As the episode wraps up, she sends off this Friendship Letter to Princess Celestia with the lesson she’s learned:

I am happy to report that I now realize there are wonderful things in this world you just can’t explain, but that doesn’t necessarily make them any less true. It just means you have to choose to believe in them. And sometimes it takes a friend to show you the way.

The message of this episode is a little ham-fisted and confused, and what the casual viewer comes away with is the story of, essentially, a non-religious person coming to believe in a religion because they’ve witnessed a miracle.

Rejoice, my bronies and pegasisters: MLP has returned!

I intended to write this review last week after the premiere, but you know, school and stuff. Anyway, let’s talk about the premiere two-parter, “The Crystal Empire”, and last Saturday’s “Two Many Pinkie Pies”! In the former, the Mane Six have to help Shining Armor and Cadence save a city from an ancient curse, and Twilight faces an important test. In the latter, Pinkie Pie clones herself because she wants to be able to spend more time with her friends, but hijinks quite obviously ensue.

“The Crystal Empire” had big shoes to fill. Although the first season’s premiere episodes are denigrated as the worst of the series, Season Two had both the premiere with Discord and the finale with Queen Chrysalis and the Changelings, and I think this one suffered living up to it. For a series that has given us a lot of interesting and complex villains throughout the show, I found King Sombra frankly boring.

Cosplay Questions: The Creative Cosplay

There are two ways to do a cosplay. One is to try and be exactly like the character in question and the other is to take a character and do something new with it. This post will be focused on the latter.

Lady Saika and I have done a lot of cosplaying together (her more than me). Usually, we don’t do the same cosplay twice (to the chagrin of our wallets). We’ve always tried to look exactly like our characters. And after a while, there is only so much joy you get from being the exact character, not to mention running out of awesome characters to be. Doing a creative cosplay allows you to flex different mental muscles.

For example, Ladies Saika, Nakura, and I just did a ponies-as-people cosplay at Otakon. It was fairly basic as creative cosplay goes, but we had fun nonetheless. Genderbending (as has been discussed in other places in this blog) is also a part of the creative cosplay.

Creative cosplaying requires you (in a sense) to put yourself in the character’s shoes and requires you ask yourself really tough questions. “Would Pinkie Pie be fashionable or would she just look like a pink mess?” And for a genderbent cosplay, “Would the 9^th Doctor wear a black denim skirt or black skinny jeans?”

However, the real fun comes in trying to think out of the box. For example, I’m in the process of convincing Lady Saika that a drag queen Naruto group would be awesome. Because it would be. Just imagine Guy Sensei in a green, sequined jumpsuit with a really deep V-neck. As long as you think out the idea completely, then you can do it. No cosplay ever ends well if it is a half-assed attempt.

Now, I bet you’re wondering whether or not people are going to think a drag queen Naruto group too strange, even by con standards. First off, as Lady Saika wrote in her crossplaying post, a good costume is a good costume and people will love it regardless. Second, there is nothing too strange for conventions.

And that’s about it. If you can come up with an idea and then put a costume together that reflects that idea, then you are all set!

First World Cosplay Problems

So a while back, Lady Saika, another friend, and I thought of starting a tumblr specifically about cosplay problems. Needless to say, I got as far as creating the page and haven’t done anything since. But yesterday it occurred to me while attempting to shop for a costume that it is blog writing material.

My friends and I are doing ponies-as-people cosplay and I am Pinkie Pie. Right now I have shoes and a wig (which came in the mail literally twenty minutes ago). The thing with doing a costume that allows for a lot of freedom is that too much freedom can be a bad thing. And by bad thing I mean trying on every piece of pink clothing in the store. Some of them at the same time. I sent a picture to Lady Saika (who I believe was horrified) asking whether I was wearing enough pink (she said “omg yes” by the way).

So my problem wasn’t finding pink clothes (pink is apparently ‘in’ this year) but the right pink clothes for Pinkie Pie without putting her in an outfit which would make Rarity cry that was still Pinkie. Yesterday I didn’t find one. But I still have time before Otakon so I’m not going to start worrying just yet.

MLP: Pinkie Pie’s Awesome Song

So last week I went over to ihazstew’s place to engage in some My Little Pony, and the episode we watched started with Pinkie Pie singing an amazing song. It’s been stuck in my head since last week. I can’t get it out, nor I can I stop myself from singing it. So in an effort to subject everyone else to it, enjoy: