Assorted Thoughts on the Best of Ponies, Pinkamina Diane Pie · 5:05pm Dec 16th, 2011
So, Pinkie Pie is best pony. I take this fact as self-evident.
(I kid. I know others have other favorite ponies, and many even dislike Pinkie. But hear me out here.)
One of the things I like about Pinkie is that, even though she's clearly the wackiest of the mane cast and the comic relief character, she's not a caricature. She has depth, she has pain. She's real.
In "Griffon the Brush Off," she moons over Rainbow Dash (platonically, I'm quire sure, in canon), and she displays such a lovely range of emotions. She's happy when Dash spends time with her, then sad (perhaps even jealous) when Dash ditches her for Gilda. She's frustrated, perhaps even angry, when Twilight accuses her of being jealous, and then she's subdued and full of regret when she realizes that Twilight might be right. And then, she throws herself whole-heartedly into making things right, the best way she knows--by throwing a party. The capacity for love and forgiveness she shows at the end of the episode never fails to make me smile.
And, of course, there's "Party of One." I know this episode is a bit infamous and has helped spawn a slew of Pinkamina Goes On a Rampage stories, but that's not how I interpreted the episode at all. Pinkie's irritated and frustrated, absolutely, perhaps even angry. But the anger is a cover ... behind it, there's fear and sadness and pain. She is so very afraid in this episode--it's heart-breaking to me, not scary. Why does Pinkie believe all her friends will abandon her so easily? What's happened to her that's left her this insecure and afraid? Plus, she seems to tie her self-worth as a pony to her ability to throw parties--if she can't throw good parties any more, then she figures she's worthless to everyone else. Why does she think that's the only worth she has to her friends?
It's entirely possible I'm reading more into all of this than the writers ever intended to be there, but I can't help but wonder. I wonder about how Pinkie has become who she is, and I wonder what else lies behind the bright smile and too-loud laugh. She's like that classmate we all had in school who was the class clown, brash and loud, funny but sometimes annoying, who was always trying just a little too hard, because they were afraid no one would love them if they weren't always "on."
Last but not least, I'm enamored with her story in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles." It's a fair question how much of it is and how much of it is--Pinkie is not a pony with the best relationship to the truth, after all--but I think the core nugget of the story is true. The sadness, the repression, the emptiness of her early childhood ... which I find almost as heart-breaking as "Party of One." And when she finally smiled, it was because of something quiet and rare, a rainbow, in a moment when the extroverted pony is alone. And the crux of her parties, we learn, is simply about making others smile. There's something so simple and so beautiful about that.
Also, Pinkie Pie digs polka, which is seriously adorbs.
pinkie pie is best pony? silly Donny's Boy that's not how you spell pinkie pie! ... oh wait it is never mind carry on