A Very Simple Fact About Pinkie Pie that Nobody Seems to Have Realized · 10:51pm Nov 11th, 2016
Remember all those times that Pinkie Pie randomly referenced human culture with lazy pun names in the show? Remember that time she tried to hold an entire conversation with nothing but the most painfully obvious pop culture references? Remember all those times she was more cringingly self-aware than the Animaniacs on their worst days? What about that time where she just randomly stopped, looked around, and said "I'm in a cartoon show", "I think that's a little complex for the target audience", or anything else like that?
Because I sure as hell don't. Because that doesn't happen in the show. Pinkie Pie doesn't do things like randomly name-drop human celebrities with butchered pun-names. She doesn't do overt references. And as for subtle references, she does about as many as the entire universe around her. Game of Thrones, Abbott and Costello, the Hatfields and McCoys, Spider-Man and Braveheart are a list of things referenced by ponies who aren't Pinkie Pie, and in a manner so subtle that you actually have to know the material beforehand to spot the reference.
The pink pony's entire shtick is cartoon slapstick. She knows exactly one thing: She is inside a TV show. That's all. She doesn't know the plot, she doesn't have the script, she doesn't know which new character's going to be introduced next, she doesn't even know the target demographic. Pinkie Pie knows that she is a cartoon character, and that's it.
So why in the name of Granny Smith's false hip is Pinkie Pie constantly represented as the most obnoxious version of Deadpool in fanfiction? Why in all the hells is her unique brand of humor regularly superseded by the most lazy form of joke, and the punchline is always the same tired 'herpeh-derp, dem other poneis not recognize dis reference to da Bloos brudders and dey tink Pinks is retarded'? Exactly how badly do all of you not understand Pinkie Pie, that you just replace all her jokes and character with a self-awareness that far exceeds what was established in canon?
Seriously. I do not understand this trend. It makes literally no sense. Pinkie Pie is not the Genie from Aladdin. She never has been. The fact that at least half of this fandom thinks that the only aspect of Pinkie's character that exists is 'there is no fourth wall' is unfounded and absurd.
Look, if nothing else, let me leave you with this little tidbit. Pinkie Pie is all about making ponies laugh. She's dedicated her life, her profession, her existence to putting a smile on ponies' faces. She can and will do anything to make her friends happy, including defying physics on a whim. And there's a very interesting comic that perfectly illustrates why Pinkie Pie, who loves to make you smile, wouldn't constantly spew cultural references that none of the ponies would understand:
Pinkie Pie is not Deadpool. She is not Robin Williams' Genie. She is Pinkie Pie.
Treat her like it.
Yes, but.
I agree for the most part, but I don't think I'd go as far as that.
Pinkie does show an uncanny level of alternate-universe awareness. Several times in canon she reveals a perfect understanding of what goes on in the EQG universe, and she switches place with her double without skipping a beat. She frequently guesses things she has no way of knowing about, and plans for things she has no way to have inside knowledge of. So in those respects, she's a step beyond self-aware of her cartoon or scripted status. She has uncanny luck, and possibly knowledge of many general elements of FiM and EQG.
4297847 The point still stands. Whatever Pinkie is, she isn't a mouthpiece for lazy referential humor.
4297848
Agreed.
An excellent observation, which hopefully lends to repairing the integrity of our misinterpreted party pony.
... I'm pretty sure I'm guilty of misusing her, actually. BAD ME!
Oh no. Don't you think you've hammered this in e—
Ah. Well then. Carry on.
4297920 That's definitely the funniest thing you've ever said.
^ this
4297922 agree with you, but she Was created to be a kid-friendly Version of deadpool, cherry-chimichanga's anyone?
4298567 ...
You know, before I stopped to think that you might be making a joke based on that one time that a dish only sometimes connected to Deadpool was mentioned, this comment had a lot more swearwords in it.
SHE. ISN'T. DEADPOOL. She's comic relief.
4298577 I was but I thought more about it though, her favorite word is said dish, She breaks the fourth wall, and can reform herself( after baby episode), and can call upon anything she needs out of hammer space... the MODERN dead pool does all these things and not much else(I.e movie deadpool), she is definitely not comic deadpool though. He also provides comic relief for his own actions, she also has another personality( i.e. pinkamina)
But your right she's not Deadpool, she's Pinkie Pie with Deadpool Qualities... can you argue with that?
4298657 Isn't it enough for her to just be Pinkie Pie?
4298658 yes but does she not have some of the powers of deadpool, which is what I essentially asked? She is pinkie pie, but she shares powers with him.
THANK YOU!
I cannot tell you how annoyed I get when Pinkie just "reads the script" or makes some obscure reference to some previous generations pop culture.
4298889 LOL have you watched Scootertrix the Abridged series? Pinkie has the "power of the fourth." Give you three guesses what that means? Don't you just like the fourth wall being broken? Celestia and Luna do it too.
On this one skip to 3:09.
what would you think about something like how she's portrayed in fallout equestria, IE generally borderline psychic, but still unaware of her status as a character in a story?
4299725 Scootatrix the abridged series, sounds like fanfiction, ie NOT CANON.
Oh look you already provided evidence to prove my point, thank you for making that argument so easy.
I don't have any problem with the forth wall being broken, Deadpool is one of my favorite characters of all time, and I loved his movie and all the fourth wall humor present in it. But as this blog points out, that is not Pinkie Pie, she is not Deadpool, and she is not some script reading, writer conversing wall breaker, she has broken the fourth wall IN CANON, once, maybe twice, and it wasn't NEARLY to the level of Deadpool.
4300317 Well, that sounds lovely and very creative.
My problem isn't that Pinkie has a lot of weirdly defined magic around her and she's generally an odd character. It's the fandom's tendency to make her nothing but a fourth-wall breaker in works ostensibly based in canon. An AU psychic Pinkie, or even a canon psychic Pinkie, is perfectly fine in my books.
4300423 Okay, not sure what the hostility is over. Still Pinkie is one of the funniest characters I feel in the show because she does these kinds of things. Well, maybe not as literal but still she's our little ball of ADD
4300423 It's spelled 'canon' when referring to a show, and 'cannon' when referring to the weapon found on a ship.
4300923 Gah, fixed, thanks.
4300918 Except, she doesn't do those kinds of things, she just acts likes she's in a cartoon, doesn't break the fourth wall except in a tiny handful of situations.
As for my hostility, while I admit it was unwarranted, and for which I apologise, but you acted like the fact she breaks fourth wall in Scootatrix, a fanfiction which has no impact on the Canon of the show, was some kind of irrefutable evidence that she has fourth wall breaking characteristics. Which is quite a stupid argument as it only proves the point that was raised here, in that Pinkie's rapid fourth wall breaking powers are, something given to her by the fans, not the show, and having her do that kind of thing is incredibly OOC and gets annoying. I will grant you that an Abriged series deliberately makes its characters in some way OOC from canon, be it playing them up to ridiculous degrees or completely reversing what they are. But again, that only furthers the point that fourth wall breaking is OOC for Pinkie Pie, and further brings into question why you would use that as evidence in this argument.
4301217
Absolutely wrong. I always keep Fanfiction and what not as two separate things. Where did you get that from?
I was just adding something to the conversation. Besides, the only character that shows any such power is technically Discord at the end of season six.
Sorry if you thought, whatever you thought I was saying before. You just need to learn to read into context of other peoples posts and the arguments can easily be avoided. As for me? I'm just a guy who finds these topics interesting. Like where did the fandoms fascination with Derpy X Luna come from? How does changeling magic work? (Prior to the season 6 finale of course.) And where did the fandom come up with the fourth wall breaking for Pinkie? I mean someone obviously saw or heard something that would suggest it but what and where? That's what should be asked. Sadly all to often people argue that what the fandom says is law and other say its wrong but no one tries to prove it. Same point you were making.
At this point I wasn't and never was arguing over whether Pinks could break the fourth wall or not. I was trying to find a common ground to start that conversation rather than just jump middle of the conversation when you attacked me and made this silly allegation against me. That's fine of course cause it did seem random, as the subject we're currently talking about.
But all that aside I can see why you thought I was arguing against your point by jumping in the middle of it, though my input was more to ease the rising tensions you had with Milord (Thats's what some of us call him) before jumping into it. Just know that attacking someone without warrant is uncool but that's okay cause I was in the wrong too. So, are we cool?
4301217 Actually now that I've looked into it I think the episode Over the Barrel was what started this fourth wall breaking thing. Remember at the end when Pinkie opens the void that comes after the episode ends? That might be where this whole thing even started when she addressed Twilight technically the after portion of the episode.
4301419 Given that I haven't disliked your second comment I think you need to take a bit of the blame for this too, since its clear I'm not the only one who thought such.
And word of advice, when you're trying to "bury the hatchet" try to sound a bit less patronizing, whether accidental or on purpose, it'll make it much easier, still I think you're being sincere, so I'll leave it at that.
And you're probably right, Over the Barrel is more than likely what started this Pinkie Fourth wall breaker phase, with its ending, but it still bugs me that people take it so far though since that was a really small fourth wall joke and people have just ramped it up to eleven.
4301586
Yeah, that's why I use emotes.
I use them in correlation to how I feel during a topic. I've always had an issue with people amusing the worst in me when I do this hence why I use the emotes. That and I was taking some of the blame if not most of it for your misunderstanding of my intentions. Just wanted to let you know if I ever do dislike something you do say I will say it as such, but you haven't upset me to that point friend. 
But that's all water under the bridge now, let's talk about Pinkie now.
Now that I think about it, what does constitute a fourth wall break anyway? It's very obvious that Pinkie has bent the shit out of it no doubt otherwise no one would be having this conversation I guess. I know Deadpool is a prime example of fourth wall shattering, but I personally think her fourth wall breaking habits come more out of her bending it and people misinterpreting it as fourth wall "breaking". Much like you said. Never the less it has made her abilities insanely popular like her ability to pull stuff seemingly out of nowhere.
That was partially explained as her having stashed things all over Ponyville in case she ever needed them. Her hair however still remains a mystery, and why she's able to pull random stuff out of anywhere and not just Ponyville is beyond me. That could also be just the writers having fun too.
Well if I could drop my two cents, think the problem is kinda simple. People don't know what to do with Pinkie so they rehash old jokes and one of them in fandom is 4th wall breaking. They know that she is supposed to be funny and 4th wall breaking is funny, right? Well not exactly, it loses charm every time it is done and while Pinkie can do it in the show she does it very rarely (or was it just once?).
Think it is similar case with Discord and cotton-candy clouds.
I forget the name, but it's a common phenomenon, where a character's traits and abilities are augmented by their fans' imaginations to the point that they lose sight of what the character actually is.
That said, I think we need to pay her a bit of clairvoyance to the odd way she seems to know exactly what her friends are thinking without even realizing it. She may not explicitly know the script, but one of her gags is that she lists off exactly what was going on in a situation that nopony should even be able to know about. Granted that was showcased in Equestria Girls, it's since showed up a few times in the show.
4362120 The term is Flanderization.
As for powers such as clairvoyance, as I have stated in this comments section multiple times, I have no problem with that. If someone wants to write Pinkie Pie as a total genius who can calculate all possible outcomes, a psychic, a prophet, or something of similar vein, I have no problem with that. Some of my favorite depictions of Pinkie Pie are of the idiot savant variety.
It's a universe of magic. She's allowed to have magic. It's a universe of terrifying and not-fully-explained eldritch things that slumber beneath the earth. She can have an unconventional power source. She can be the daughter of a draconequus, or some old god taking mortal form, or any variety of truly fascinating things.
My issue is solely that Pinkie Pie is so often written as nothing but a mindless amalgamation of pop culture references by the fandom.
4362149
Oh, that. Yeah, that's not who Pinkie is.
4362279 Congratulations, you're all caught up.
4362288
So about that chat client. Do you still not use them?
4362309 I've started using Discord a whole lot.
I hope you don't mind a late reply to your post, but I 100% agree with you. (Even though I am guilty of writing fourth-wall-breaking Pinkie in a round robin fic.)
To speculate on the origins of this particular meme: I think it's because the very second episode of the show has Pinkie interrupt the Iris Out and seemingly address the audience. In those early days, fans had a lot fewer episodes to draw from when extrapolating characters' personalities, so that gag loomed large in people's minds. (In the same way Derpy getting excited about muffins in "Applebuck Season" was spun into a muffin obsession by the fans.) Once fans latched onto Pinkie's fanon personality as a fourth-wall-breaker (FWB), confirmation bias set in: unconnected bits like Pinkie seeming to look at the camera in a few episodes, or the repeat of the Iris Out gag in "Over a Barrel", were taken as further evidence for that characterization, while evidence against it (Twilight getting an Iris Out gag in "Magic Duel", or the fact that Pinkie never referenced our world in conversations with other ponies) was blithely ignored.
And then, because so many people don't like thinking for themselves, they just modeled FWB Pinkie on other FWBs they like (or worse, stole jokes from these characters outright and stuck them in Pinkie's mouth) such as the aforementioned Deadpool or Disney's Genie. Genuine, show-style Pinkie logic is actually rather hard to write; spouting references and memes is a lot easier.
4435449 First off, you're one of my latest favorite writers, so I'm never going to object to an excuse to socially interact with you.
Second, the only way for your comment to constitute a late reply would be for you to only get around to commenting when this stupid, stupid trend is entirely 100% dead and nobody cares anymore, by which point we will probably be in the seventh generation of My Little Pony.
That's an interesting thought. Will there be an entirely new site for the next generation of pony fanfiction?
Anyway, always lovely to see some decent-sized paragraphs with adequate sentence structure in the comments. Your points are well-made and your hypothesis quite plausible. Good job.
So, folks above me in the thread mentioned Scootertrix the Abridged, and I'm a big fan of that series. (And at this point, it's less of an "abridged series", and more of an AU created by re-editing and re-dubbing the show.) Their take on Pinkie is a very interesting new spin on the "Master of the Fourth Wall" fanon. For this Pinkie, knowing that she exists inside a fan-made cartoon on youtube isn't a source of sunshine and giggles; it's a cause for worry. She worries that her entire world is one cease-and-desist letter away from blinking out of existence. She worries that other ponies will panic or get depressed if they learn the truth. And as a result, she winds up something of an existentialist and, ironically, one of the most level-headed of the mane six in this universe.
I simultaneously love and hate their Episode 15 because it's remarkably similar to my own fic Den Fjerde Væg, but theirs released first.
4435592
I wonder what will happen when the actual target audience of the show grows up enough to look back on the show with adult eyes. How different will their perspective be when they analyze the show? What will their fanfics be like?
Hell, we're going on seven years of FIM now. The oldest members of the target audience from when season 1 debuted might already be trickling into our midst. (Thanks to Rage Reviews, I have seen a few fanfics by actual 11 and 12-year-olds.)
4435697 Yes, but on the other hand, your fic probably doesn't have the most annoying Celestia voice-acting of all time.
This is the sort of shit that annoys me. In a story that recently came out and became popular, which happens to be a displaced story (except the main characters are OC Draconequuses), Pinkie pulls out a fucking copy of the story, summarizes the plot of the introduction/beginning, and states the names of the two main characters to the rest of the Mane 6. I fucking hate shit like that, and I also hate that the story seems to force you to read countless other Displaced stories to understand what the main threat is, because they just say that there are "Void Displacers" who will do something if Discord isn't set free because it causes balance or something. There's no explanation as to what the Void Displacers are, nothing about why they would mess things up, no reason stated as to why balance would keep them out, and the only reason you would have to think the main characters know of these "Void Displacers" aside from the primary main character just outright stating that the Void Displacers will mess things up is that they're supposedly people who read Displaced Stories on FimFiction and apparently the Void Displacers are in one of them, even though I've read a lot of Displaced stories and none of them mention Void Displacers. It's a shitty story, and I mostly just used the fucking stupid shit that Pinkie did as a basis to rant about it. Sorry.
4660122
While I appreciate the apology, I feel like you could have used your realization that you had gotten off-topic to revise your comment and try to get back on-topic. Still, good to know that this message is still relevant.