Notes. I noticed that I missed a few useful bits of info on G3. Several actually.
TV Tropes character analysis.
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/MyLittlePonyG3Also
Wikipedia’s analysis of the films
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Little_Pony:_A_Very_Minty_Christmasen.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Little_Pony:_The_Princess_Promenadeen.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Little_Pony_Crystal_Princess:_The_Runaway_Rainbowen.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Little_Pony:_A_Very_Pony_Place(1) Means a footnote
As I promised Firehoof, here is the first of two posts examining G3 that will examine the world, its ponies, and finally how slightly modified characters can be meshed into your stories. In examining G3, I’ve decided to do so from an anthropological perspective; you might remember from your college courses that it means the study of human beings, here extended to sentient beings. An anthropologist’s job is to study his fellow sentients, not to judge or say this or that is wrong. He works under the assumption that nobody is either crazy or deliberately evil. Everybody has a reason for doing what they do, even if that reason is not immediately clear and might not make sense at first—or even of that reason is a bad one. As such, for the sake of this post, I will not look at G3 as a cartoon but as accurate historical recordings of real people, places, and things that can be studied to ascertain an understanding of G3 culture.
In terms of understanding the culture G3 ponies, the watchwords are frivolity and boundless optimism… to an extreme. A good example of what I’m saying can be found in “A Charming Birthday.” A simple story, it shows the ponies planning a birthday for Kimono, “the wisest pony in all the land.” Wise except for the fact that she really only seems to be of average intelligence and is thus wise only when compared to the other G3 ponies. After a ditzy visitor runs away giggling, a bemused Kimono patronizingly says, “This is why I live out of town.”
“This is why I live out of town…” By not only showing the ponies as more than a little crazy but by having the only sane pony roll her eyes at their antics, “Charming Birthday” offers up a certain subversive humor.
TVTropes has this to say that (1),
Kimono is one of only a handful of grownups in a world of children; that the G3s are children is seen when Pinkie Pie asks what is it that they always do to solve a problem. Resident party planner Razaroo asks, in all seriousness, “Go play?” Pinkie’s response? She whispers, “Later.”
If you take the time to watch, you’ll see that nine times out of ten the ponies will always be smiling. If something bad happens, they’ll look at each other for a brief moment before laughing. They choose to “giggle at the ghosties” you might say. With how they mention the passage of time and we see a few children we know that they can grow old but they never really grow up. That’s not to say that playing is all they do. As “Runaway Rainbow,” shows, the G3 ponies would be offended by the thought that all they do is play.
There, we see Rarity of Unicornia, the youngest of several Rainbow Princesses who are charged with raising the first rainbow of the season, the rainbow from which all other rainbows of that year will come. She is old enough to bear her portion of the burden but she abdicates her responsibility in order to have fun. She doesn’t care that in doing so will wreck the ecosystem and cause privation—or perhaps even famine. (The rainbow berry plant, one of the key foodstuffs in the G3 world, needs rainbows to survive). She doesn’t care that in doing so she will destroy a symbol sacred to all G3 ponies. (Though far apart, both unicorn and earth pony sing, “
And whenever there’s a rainbow, there is music in our hearts!”) All the young unicorn cares about is her own personal pleasure going so far as to say in one song, “Basically I just want to have fun.” Rarity’s teacher despairs at her pupil. When she sees the child playing with the magic wand she should be training with, Cherilee grumbles, “Rarity just likes the way it sparkles.”
When she leaves for Ponyville, she also doesn’t care if she hurts anyone. The ponies there welcome her with open arms, chief among them Rainbow Dash who calls the Rainbow Princess “little darling.” She goes on to rue her decision. While in Ponyville, Rarity runs wild, destroying private property and almost injuring several ponies in the process. That’s when the citizens of Ponyville experience the only time that they did not smile and laugh over a mishap because someone could have been hurt and worse, it was not just an accident. It was caused by pure selfishness, something compounded only by Rarity refusal to take any responsibility. (She blames the skates she was using.) Not surprisingly Rainbow Dash gives her “little darling”—the one pony who above all others should be giving her all to make the best rainbow she could but instead forswore her duty so she could play—a look of pure contempt.
Rest assured, Rarity learns her lesson, and, thanks to the efforts of Rainbow Dash and the others, she not only is returned home safely to Unicornia (and the arms of her overjoyed family) but learns her lesson as well.
The fact that they show a full range of emotions and appreciate the values of responsibility belies the idea that they are drooling nincompoops. In fact, the roller coaster proves that the G3s are just as smart—and possibly even smarter—as the ponies of any other generations. In the videos I linked up, you can see several shots of the ponies riding the roller coaster situated in the amusement park adjacent to their Ponyville. … Yes, for no other reason than mere fun they go through all the trouble of building a fully functioning amusement park next to town. If you add what
TV Tropes calls Fridge Logic, if you think all this through… the implications are staggering.
From observations, we know for a fact that the G3 ponies are smart enough to operate theme park machinery. That doesn’t mean anything by itself as it is unskilled labor. However, the fact that the G3 ponies are on their own means that they have to at least be smart enough to maintain and repair it. Thus they must have basic mechanical skills—if you have a broken car, a G3 pony could probably repair it for you. And Firehoof, since you don’t plan to include G3.5, this means that no outside force like G3.5’s Twinkle Wish is doing things for them, the ponies had to have built the roller coaster by themselves.
Do you have any idea how smart you have to build a roller coaster? (2) If the G3s built it, then that means that at least some of them have the equivalent of PhDs in math, physics, and engineering. That’s right folks, if you take the cannon facts to their logical extreme, viewing it as not just a TV show but as historical recordings of an alien culture, it stands to reason that your average G3 could be much smarter than we are. In fact, with how empty their world is (3), with how there is no hint of an outside source that could have supplied them with the metal, they might have even dug the metal ore from the ground. You might even add mining and metallurgy to the G3s’ intellectual skills.
But… but… but they’re idiots! How can they be that smart!? With how the cannon Mr. Moochic is at once one of the great magical theorists in MLP history and utterly forgetful, there are such thing as absent minded professors. A better idea is that they are comparable to “idiot savants.”
Wikipedia describes Savant syndrome as a “rare condition in which people with developmental disorders have one or more areas of expertise, ability, or brilliance that are in contrast with the individual's overall limitations.” (4)
(Whether the G3s are crazy or have some kind of condition, or if their attitudes are purely cultural is your choice Firehoof. This nevertheless provides something sneaky with which to surprise your readers.)
There’s a reason why they so look up to ponies like Kimono; what most G3s may have in technical skills, they lack in common sense. She has wisdom that they simply don’t. G3 ponies are as smart as the ponies from any other generation but their culture does not value intelligence for its own sake. Due to the fact that their society places only limited emphasis on delayed gratification, you can see why intelligence is valued only inasmuch as it can be applied to immediately useful endeavors—even if those endeavors are mindless entertainment. (Kinda reminds you of the US of A!
) Again they are not anti-intellectuals and they’re not slaves of culture. Kimono is a bit of a rebel in how she chooses not to play hopscotch. For their part, Cherilee and Star Catcher come across as rather intelligent and mature. For most ponies however, it’s just that the culture they’re raised in implicitly teaches them that if they can read a book or go play they should go play.
I’m working right now on character analysis along with suggestions as to how they can be used in your stories. I should have them by Sunday. Hope you like!
1)
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/MyLittlePonyG32)
science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/roller-coaster.htm3) I noticed something about the world of G3. It’s an unpopulated world. If you take G3 cannon at face value, you come to the conclusion that a mere four hamlets exist on the entire planet and hold a population of, at the most, just a few hundred ponies. (And elves and at least one human as one of those hamlets is Santa’s village.) The rest of the world is empty wilderness. A large part of G1 was the ponies exploring the world of Ponyland and meeting its myriad sentient races. G4’s Equestria is a fully developed country.
MLP Tales just showed the one town but enough mentions of other places and brief appearances of locations like Tropical Island and the Meadowsweet family farm show that it was part of an entire world.
4)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome
) Again they are not anti-intellectuals and they’re not slaves of culture. Kimono is a bit of a rebel in how she chooses not to play hopscotch. For their part, Cherilee and Star Catcher come across as rather intelligent and mature. For most ponies however, it’s just that the culture they’re raised in implicitly teaches them that if they can read a book or go play they should go play. 
