Help! My Heart is Full of Pony! - Celestia · 9:27pm Dec 20th, 2019
My absolute favorite thing about Season One is Princess Celestia. Her mere presence is as warm as it is authoritative - an almost contradictory blend of regality and whimsey. She can fall out of the sky as a gag at the end of Feeling Pinkie Keen, or swoop in at the end of a conflict and instantly make everything alright. She is feared by all who encounter her, and yet completely benign.
The end result is a sublime air of safety about Celestia that is both contagious and enchanting. I cannot praise this enough. Everything about her just plain makes you feel good. From a functional stand point, she was clearly designed as a motherly figure for small children to connect to, but Princess Celestia ended up being so much more than a mere kiss on a booboo. As an immortal closely associated with the Sun, her protective, nurturing aura ended up becoming transcendental. Cosmic.
As the show slowly grew, and the Mane 6 saved Equestria again and again, their relationship with the princess became far more informal. However, in Season One, even though these six were the very embodiments of the Elements of Harmony, they were still, first and foremost, small town folk.
Every visit from Celestia involved a great deal of preparation and fanfare. Quite a few early plotlines revolve around a conflict created by the perceived need to please her. "Swarm of the Century," for instance, centers around the need to get the parasprite problem under control before Celestia arrives. Then, of course, there's "Bird in the Hoof," when Fluttershy borrowed Philomena to nurse her back to health. Both she and Twilight spent the entire episode fearing "getting banished and then locked in a dungeon in the place that she banished [them] to."
Never did Celestia actually show displeasure at any of the things the Mane Six feared. The predictable twist was always that Celestia did not care at all. Even in "Best Night Ever" after the Mane Six literally trashed her ballroom, destroying art and architecture, the princess's entire response boiled down to "thanks for keeping the gala from being boring."
It was completely necessary for the show to grow, and it's only natural that Celestia's role in it changed over time, especially as the main characters grew to be seasoned warriors of harmony. However, the gravitas around Season One Celestia was a truly remarkable thing. Her presence was always profoundly comforting. In a word - divine.
Discuss.
-Sprocket
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There's another aspect to this that I think is important to why FiM was so appealing.
In so many other shows, when a woman is shown doing a role that we're - rightly or wrongly - used to seeing a man do, she does so by being manly. She kicks ass, she wins arguments, she wears the trousers and has all the cajones of a man. Perhaps even more so, because the writers feel the need to underline the point: this woman is just as manly as any man!
For example, in 24 there was a woman President of the USA. She was just as forceful, just as strong-willed as any man we see doing the job. She was, to all intents and purposes, a man being played by a woman actor. That's a missed opportunity: instead of empowering women, it reinforced the masculinity that's everywhere now.
Princess Celestia is different. She's a leader who's not just female, but feminine. Who's able to show us a style of leadership that's more uplifting, more encouraging, more empowering. She's not lacking in power herself, but she excels at helping others to reach their full potential. After too many examples of masculine rule, it's refreshing to see that a more positive attitude is possible.
5172558
Thanks for that. It's a truly beautiful observation. Just in time for Her Majesty's Solstice.
Thank you for again putting things in a (sun)light I hadn't quite seen that way before. :)
5172558
Aye, and thanks. :)
5172625
Interesting. Celestia's in the sense that though this is the longest night, the days now begin to wax?