Entry 01: Breaking the Blog In - A Bit About the Author

Figured I've been leaning too heavily on my author notes for insights into my perspective on MLP, so I thought maybe I should use my blog. I have many thoughts about the horse show and I've already talked my Discord friends' ears off with them (one of whom does write here; if you want to read a good Dark Souls crossover, go read The Hollow Pony), so now I'd like to subject y'all to those same thoughts.

So, hi. I'm Horse -- MamaHorseteeth or SisterHorseteeth in full, depending on the mood I was in when I created my account. The equine of indiscernable species and tribe up in my profile is Mangrove Noodle (v.2, if you remember the slightly different version with which I started posting stories here). I threw her together in Pony Town before I really had any understanding of technicolor equine biology. Something something, Mangrove's part hippocampus pony, part zin zebra (what the 'Season 10' comic calls a kelpie).

I'm a trans gal who took the backwards route: rather than being an egg who was into MLP during its prime and later realized she was trans, I realized I was trans almost a decade ago and then in early 2023 a bunch of friends sat me down and Clockwork-Oranged me into an MLP fan.

I kid, of course; I watched it voluntarily. Turns out, scaredy-cats like me need something lighthearted to watch between episodes of The Magnus Archives, which one member of that same friend group was guiding us through. G4 became something of a comfort watch after a long shift at my job (at the time) working Print & Marketing at Staples.

Speaking of The Magnus Archives, I have an on-hiatus MLP crossover called The Celestia Archives, hosted only on Ao3 because this site forbids stories in transcript format, which is dumb. I refused to compromise my artistic vision.
But I also got increasingly annoyed with how TMA delineated the fears, while at the same time the idea for Empathy is Magic kept cooking in the back of my head, so I switched gears to EiM. I have several unpublished chapters of TCA that I may go ahead and publish at some point, but I do not foresee myself returning to it any time soon. The Shadowbolts have infested my heart instead, and they will not let go.

Anyways, back to the subject of MLP itself, I promised opinions. I'll start light, and dedicate whole essays to my more complicated opinions later.

- Fave member of the Mane 6?
For a while, Rarity and Fluttershy were neck-and-neck for the top spot, but in the end, Rarity won out. She has the spark of madness about her, which is one of the most attractive traits in a woman to me. Of course, she's also a brilliant artist, socially-graceful, and sharp as a knife (while keeping that wit sheathed like one, too). Truly a Renneighsance mare for the ages.

- Least fave member of the Mane 6?
Meanwhile, the pony I found myself begging to stop hogging screentime most often was Pinkie Pie. She may also have a certain madness, but it's less of a spark hidden within her and more of a constant, unshielded radioactive emission that makes the camera go fuzzy while the camerapony coughs up chocolate milk where blood should be. There's no subtlety to it, no grace.
Sometimes Twilight got a different kind of tedious, but not often. I can't say she lacked the spark, but growing past it was a rather big part of her character arc.
I'm going to count Spike here as well, since I can't call him a secondary character for the purposes of the next questions: I was not a fan of him at first, but he grew on me.

- Fave secondary FiM character?
The Great and Powerful.

- Least fave secondary FiM character?
Daring Do. I imagine I shall talk about her at more length in a future blog post, but to be brief: I sure am glad they at least realized by the end of the show that they were glamorizing an imperialist tomb-robber and that they should maybe try to address that.

- Fave EqG Shadowbolt?
Sour Sweet my belour sweet. Girlie of all time.

- Least fave EqG Shadowbolt?
I could try to do a copout and say, like, technically human Neon Lights or Pokey Pierce are Shadowbolts, but no, I know what you're after.
Honestly, if I'm ignoring all the fanon I've stapled to them to make them actual characters in EiM instead of walking dialogue affects, I'd say my least favorites are Indigo and Sunny, just on account of them having the least to latch onto character-wise. I feel like more thought was put into characterizing them through costume design than actual dialogue -- do take a close look at their uniforms, beyond Sunny's Pop-Girls; each wears it in a different way. You'd think Indigo would be the pants-wearer, but no: it's Sugarcoat. Indigo also can't seem to tie a bow for diddly-squat.

- Fave secondary EqG character?
Wallflower Blush. She made for a compelling villain and a believable turnaround, and she's just adorable to boot.

- Least fave secondary EqG character?
Vignette Valencia. Take what I said about Wally and make it all the opposite.

- Best FiM season?
I'm bad at picking a single favorite when I have more than like six choices. I enjoyed Seasons 4-7 the best. Once again, I must impress upon you the importance of the spark of madness: I adore Starlight. She's like if Twilight stayed fun. I would have totally preferred if, instead of the Friendship School idea, Seasons 8/9 were focused more on the Starlight/Trixie/Maud/Sunburst friend group as, like, Starlight's postgrad friendship project of sorts, if that makes sense.

- Worst FiM season?
You may be gathering that I do not like Seasons 8/9, which is true: I don't. But I don't actually know if I hate those seasons worse than I hated Season 1. When I decided to rewatch Season 1 with Mom, I thought I might come back to it with a newfound appreciation for those wacky mares.
I did not.
Season 1 has some great episodes. So do Seasons 8/9. 8/9 are packed with deeply annoying episodes, but 1 has a small amount of individual episodes that make me want to tear my hair out.
I love Trixie. Sleazy women are as precious to me as madwomen. I hate that the moral of her introductory episode is that heckling is good and that stage performers should get a real job.
I like Zecora. I hate that her introductory episode cast the entirety of Ponyville as inveterate speciesists in order to teach a (pre-2016-flavor) lesson about racism.
I don't have any strong feelings about Little Strongheart one way or the other. I hate that her introductory episode was about how the indigenous buffalo really should have just compromised with the settler bozos who textually stole their land ONE YEAR AGO -- in the process establishing Equestria as an expansionist settler state.
Come on, writers, make it harder for me to criticize the politics of your Pony Paradise. Where's the challenge in making Equestria just The USA & Canada, But Horses?

- Best EqG movie/special?
Despite my adoration of the Shadowbolts, my favorite movie is easily Rainbow Rocks. "Three mean little plots show up one day with Actual Good Music" made for a hay of a followup to a frankly mediocre (and lorewise-infuriating, but we'll get to that in the next blog post or so) pilot movie, and it worked, banish it. Nopony asked the bassline for "Welcome to the Show" to rutt as nasty as it did, so everypony thank whichever Dazzling recorded the backing track. My money's on Adagio, personally. Sonata as lead guitarist is an idea that would play into her angle of false innocence, while it feels right to put the angry one on drums. And the bass guitar is the sultriest of those three instruments.
As to specials, the outer two are the best, but Forgotten Friendship beats out Sunset's Backstage Pass. Watching Wally rip out Sunset's memories was delectably gut-wrenching. I did not expect the show to go so hard.

- Worst EqG movie/special?
I can't really complain much about the movies, but Rollercoaster of Friendship and Spring Breakdown peeved me off in two different but equally-infuriating ways.
RoF was promising. It seemed like it was setting Micro Chips up to have a moment of heroism and work with Sci-Twi to hack the Rainbooms out of their cyberspace prison.
And then it scatted the bed. It was as if one writer took over after the first set down the script right there without leaving any notes. All of that setup was abandoned to make cyberspace Some White Room In Real Life. That is possibly the closest to an aneurysm I've ever been.
Spring Breakdown, meanwhile, was a waste of a special all the way through. I have more thoughts on it, but for now: the writers thought a boring redo of Mysterious Mare-Do-Well was a better use of EqG's very limited runtime than the whole "everyhuman has to cut through Equestria to make it home" deal, and I simply cannot fathom why.

- Best Princess?
Sunset Shimmer.

So yeah. Feel free to ask any questions unanswered here in the blog comments.

Next time (I'm not sure if these posts will be scheduled affairs like the weekly EiM chapter), I'm going to dive deeper into my opinions on Equestria Girls as a series.

- Your Wettest Horse, Mangrove Noodle