Help! My Heart is Full of Pony! - Hearth's Warming Club, Pt 1. Diversity · 12:36am Jan 1st, 2021
Over the years, the show has had a lot of Hearth's Warming specials. From the revolutionary politics of the friendocracy established by The Founding Sisters on the first Hearth's Warming, to...well, a whole lot of other stuff.
Hearth's Warming Club is different. I re-watched it recently on a whim - it being the only holiday special I had never seen twice.
The story opens in Twilight Sparkle's School of Friendship. Just as all the kids are getting ready to go home for winter vacation, a hooded scoundrel glitter-bombs the Fire of Friendship (that had been adorning their tree for some reason), and flees into the dormitory. Twilight and Rainbow Dash, having ascertained that the vandal could not possibly have escaped the building, narrows the investigation down to six kids: Smolder, Sandbar, Yona, Gallus, Silverstream, and Ocellus.
One by one, the kids are questioned privately while the other five clean up the mess. A terrible fate hovers over them all: if nocreature comes forward and confesses, then everycreature has to stay behind to clean up, miss their trains home, and be deprived of their favorite winter holiday celebrations.
One of the beautiful things about this episode is that we get to find out what those holidays (and traditions around them) are. Think about it. How often does TV do stuff like this? MLP used its holiday special to actually address the very real fact that not every culture celebrates the same holiday.
Discuss.
-Sprocket
P.S. Yak holiday best.
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I love the image of Twilight staring glassy-eyed at the viewer surrounded by screaming yaks.