Frames of Folly

by Ringcaat


Deconstructing the Title Screen

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"Wait―what is THIS one?" asked Twilight.
Pinkie came hopping over. "OOH! It's words." She squinted, turned her head sideways, turned her body sideways, twisted her head the rest of the way around until it was right-side-up again, and read: "My little pony, friendship is magic."

"I can see what it says, Pinkie! But why is it here?"
"And more importantly, why is it purple?"
Twilight blinked. "The background, you mean? It's orchid. Like my coat."
"So I suppose it's all about YOU, huh?" demanded Pinkie.
"Look around!" said Twilight, gesturing to the pictures from her life surrounding them. "In this place, it is all about me."
Pinkie untwisted herself, unperturbed. "And why are there little hearts inside the 'P' and the 'O'?"
"Well, why not? Love is a part of friendship, after all. But what does 'My little pony' mean?"
"That is weird. Whose pony is it talking about? Celestia's? Everypony is little compared to her!"
Twilight swallowed. "If that's true, it would have to be me. But am I... does she really see me as hers?"
"Maybe it's advice!" suggested Pinkie. "She's talking to her little pony―you―and telling you, hey Twilight, just a heads up―friendship is magic!!"
Twilight frowned. "Or it could be a title. It looks something like a movie's title screen."
"But it's in color!"
"They can make title screens in color, Pinkie! They just don't usually bother because the rest of the movie is in black and white." She chewed her lip, pondering. "The second part could be a subtitle."
"A what-whitle?"
"A subtitle! A second title less important than the main one! My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic."
Pinkie frowned and shook her head violently as if to clear out the gook. "Say that again, Twilight?"
Twilight repeated herself carefully. "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic."
Pinkie leapt to her hooves with a scrambling of legs. "I thought so! You pronounced all the words with capital letters! Even the word 'is'!"
"I... I did?"
"Yes you so did! But Twilight, even I can see that that 'is' has a lowercase 'i'."
Twilight squinted and looked closer. "It does?"
"Of course! Look how tiny it is!"
"But that doesn't prove anything! Small letters can still be uppercase!"
"And pigeons can grow up to be pegasi, except that they CAN'T!!" cried Pinkie, waving her forelegs. "Get realistic, Twilight! That 'i' is a shrimp! It's never going to make anything of itself!"
"But the words are all different sizes, Pinkie! Their size doesn't matter!"
Pinkie cuddled against Twilight. "That's very sweet of you to have hope for letters less fortunate than yourself. I stand corrected! But come on, Twilight! It has a dot over it. Everyone knows only little baby 'i's come with dots!"
Twilight tilted her face, looking at the image further. "But Pinkie, all the other 'I's have dots, too! Does that mean they're all lowercase?"
"Why not? When I was going through my loud phase in school, I used to spell my name 'PiNKiE PiE'!"
"I can't tell how you spelled it just from hearing you say it, Pinkie!"
Pinkie screwed her hoof in her ear squeakily. "You can't? Huh. I've gotta practice! But anyway, yes those are little 'i's and I don't KNOW what they're doing hanging out with all those capital letters!"
"Regardless," Twilight pointed out, "in a title you capitalize everything except for small articles and prepositions. And 'Is' is a verb! So it's capitalized!"
"Except it ISN'T! Because it has a DOT!"
"The dots are cosmetic!" objected Twilight. "This typeface clearly includes uppercase 'I's with dots for some reason."
"Well, you can't prove it's not little," groused Pinkie. "It's a teeny-tiny letter in a teeny-tiny word and it has a DOT OVER IT!! Even if the big 'I's have dots too, it's still probably a small one."
"But that wouldn't adhere to the accepted standards of capitalization!" countered Twilight.
"THEN WHY IS THE WORD 'my' IN LOWERCASE LETTERS?!?" yelled Pinkie.
Twilight looked again. "...You're right. The first word is the only word in small letters. But that's a complete perversion of the rules of orthography!"
"Exactly," said Pinkie triumphantly. "Whoever wrote this doesn't care about the rules. That's why it has little 'i's everywhere."
"So does that mean you think the 's' in the word 'is' is lowercase as well?" challenged Twilight.
"Well, if 'my' can be completely small, why can't 'is'?"
"Because... Gaahh!" Twilight smacked her forehead in frustration. "But it looks just like the big 'S' in 'Friendship'!"
'Are you suuure that's a big 'S'?" asked Pinkie. "You didn't pronounce it like a big 'S'!"
Twilight stared. "All the other letters are clearly capitals, except for the 'I's."
"Unless it's like you said and they only can look one way!"
"You mean if this typeface only has one case? ...I suppose." She pondered for a few moments before another realization struck. "But then the 'E' in 'Friendship' should look like the 'E' in 'Little'! And it clearly doesn't!" She banged her hoof triumphantly on the invisible floor, making no sound whatsoever. "They're not even close! The 'Friendship' 'E' has serifs, and the 'Little' 'E doesn't!"
"It has what?"
"Serifs!"
"Gesundheit!"
"Pinkie, I wasn't sneezing."
"Neither was I! I was just proving that I can make up words, too!"
Twilight chewed on air for a few seconds. "...No, I mean the little strokes at the end of the main strokes. The 'E' in 'Little isn't even flared."
"So that just means they're in different typefaces or whatever, just like the gigantic "PONY" with the hearts, and the Y with a huge tail like a spider monkey!"
"If they're just in different typefaces," retorted Twilight triumphantly, "why does the 'i' in 'Little' have a dot?!"
Pinkie blinked. "So you're saying it's more than a typeface thing? It's, like, a whole stylistic thingamijummer?"
"Exactly," nodded Twilight. "The 'dotness' of the 'i' glyph transcends typeface in this image. It's a conceptual choice, possibly representing the subordination of the self, i.e. 'I', to the entirety of the structure, in accordance with the concept of the pony being framed as something 'little' and with the overall message of friendship's importance over the supremacy of the self!"
"Sooo... that's why the 'i's are all little?"
"It's why they look little, Pinkie! But really, they're just as uppercase as any of the other letters! It would be ridiculous to spell words in all caps except for a particular letter, but it would make sense to make a conscious choice to portray the particular letter standing for the self in a style resembling its small form in order to convey a theme-specific message of humility!!"
Twilight stood panting after delivering this outburst in a rush. Pinkie slowly raised her leg to the upper right corner of the image.
"There's a letter we missed up here," she pointed out. "What does this tiny little 'R' in a circle mean?”
Twilight stared. Something about that 'R' felt profoundly wrong.
“And what about this 'TM' down here?” added Pinkie. “Is that 'Too Much'?"
Twilight stood troubled for a few seconds. And then: "You know, Pinkie, you're right. I think we have spent Too Much time looking at this one."
"Okey-dokey-loki!" agreed Pinkie, whirling her tail and hopping blithely off to the next image.