"Whining? I am not whining; I am complaining. Do you want to hear whining?"
Pink is awesome.
Welcome to the first official post displayed in the new, pink format for FOUR-COLOR PRINCESSES. My goal was always for the site to have a larger typeface for easier reading; I also always intended for the site to have a pink-and-white color scheme, but the previous template confused me in this regard. In short, after a lot of help - and a giant, embarrassing tantrum - I've finally gotten the site to look like I'd always intended it to look. I'm happy with it. Are you readers? If so, awesome. If not, I can only really say 'too bad.' The website is now themed in pink, and it's going to stay that way if I have anything to say about it.
While I've been making the site more pink, I found my thoughts also inspiring me about the subject of another article, different from the aforementioned SUPERGIRL piece I was originally planning to run as my next big project. I've only gotten two pictures (from the same person) for my "We Are All SUPERGIRL" project, so at the moment that one's on the back-burner. Instead, I've decided on a little change of pace, talking less about one particular inspirational woman character and instead focusing my attention on series of characters that didn't so much inspire me in my childhood, but who helped me get through so many tough times that I think they deserve their own piece - especially since they'd prove to inspire me in my adulthood. I'm talking about the world of MY LITTLE PONY.
Now, I should note that my love of ponies didn't begin with MY LITTLE PONY. Rather, it began with a book I've often wondered if anyone aside from myself read.
The year was 1980, and I was eight years old. This was the first year I was exposed the hypnotic and inescapable draw of the Scholastic Book Club.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the Scholastic Book Club in all its myriad forms, let me briefly explain. It was a little paper flyer that the teachers would hand out to grade-school students every so often. Featured in each page would be various literary items available for purchase, along with other things like posters and the latest issue of various grade-appropriate kids' magazines. I couldn't find one from the exact year 1980, but I've found a good representation from close to that year right below this paragraph for you to peruse, if you've never seen them. If anyone has a color Scholastic Book Club flyer from the exact year 1980, I'd love to add it to this article. For now, here's the close approximate example flyer.
Now, regular readers of this blog know that as a child I loved books. I still love books. I honestly don't know how I could have gotten through my life so far without them.
I love the smell of books. I love the feel of the covers. I love their weight in my hand. So it's probably no surprise that when I would get these flyers, I wanted to order just about everything in them.
Reality, and my parents' budget, didn't work out that way, but I'd still end up checking off more boxes than any of my classmates. When the books arrived weeks (months? I don't remember) later, everyone else in class would have two or three books. I'd usually have over a dozen or so, along with the odd poster or two that usually featured an image of some animal that was more often than not similar to this:
To say I was - and still am - a total push-over when it comes to people trying to sell me pictures of cute animals doing cute things is a complete understatement.
Nevertheless, I was beholden to my parents' budget, and they only had so much tolerance for funding my decorative ambition of covering every square inch of my room with pictures of things like pigs in boots and bunny-rabbits sniffing flowers, so I had to be careful with what I asked for in this way, judicious with my ordering and my wall space.
But one subject that could always be counted on for me to beg for the poster was when the subject was horses.
This was also true of the books about horses. Horse books were an easier issue to address than posters, because I had an inside track to acquiring them - my mother. She was incredibly fond of horses, herself, this was a one of the places where I could get away with liking something that was "for girls" without having to explain it away to my father.
If Denny-Mike wanted books about horses, Denny-Mike could have books about horses - that was her reasoning, and I was just fine with it, because it meant I got to read books about horses, even if they were considered to be "for girls."
And I wanted every single book about horses that appeared in the Scholastic Book Club, not to mention non-horse books on a variety of other fiction topics that might have seemed to my peers to be "for girls."
Of course, I had worries about this. I didn't feel at the time that I could've gotten away with JUST buying the "books for girls" I wanted so badly to read, even if the only books in a particular flyer that I was interested in were the "books for girls."
So, I reasoned that I had to be cunning. I had to think ahead to how the books would look when they were all together when they arrived from Scholastic. I had to think of how I'd explain the books I chose if my peers asked me questions. So, I would actually sit down with the Scholastic Book Club flyer and try to work out how many "books for girls" I was interested in, and then also get other books I was also interested in so the result would be "balanced" in my view, to "hide in plain sight" as it were, to avoid being too obvious.
There were a few guaranteed options that could always be counted on to help me achieve that balance. I harbored a mean crush on Encyclopedia Brown at the time, and there'd always be one of those books offered in the flyers. I'd make a point of putting that book on top of the pile of books that ended up on my desk, so anybody walking past me would see the daring boy detective -
- instead of this -
- or this -
.jpg)
- or, most especially, anything that looked anything remotely like this:
I say "especially" regarding SUMMER PONY, by Jean Slaughter Doty, because I was quite literally obsessed with that book, and in particular the edition with the cover I've posted above this paragraph. For whatever reason, I strongly identified with the girl on the cover - Ginny - and liked to imagine myself going on adventures out in the world with a beautiful pony like her Mokey.
I couldn't even begin to count how many times I read SUMMER PONY. I wore my copy down to the point where the cover was destroyed, but I had stared at it for so long it had burned into my memory.
Sometimes, I remember, I would finish it and then start reading it again without even taking a break. My eight-year-old brain simply thrilled to the adventures of Ginny a Mokey in this book, and its sequel WINTER PONY. I've linked to Amazon.com, so curious readers who want to take my word for the awesomeness of these two books for any person of any age can find the correct editions. Beware the Stepping Stone versions, which contain simplified language. If you're getting them, look for the ones with the covers I've shown in this piece. They're the originals with the unmodified text (the links go to these versions).
.jpg)
In any event, it was these two books in particular, that led me into an obsession with all things having the slightest bit to do with ponies.
However, there was still the matter of keeping this burning obsession a relative secret, in as much as any eight-year-old kid can manage to keep a secret while decorating a bedroom with pictures of the secret.
Hey, nobody ever said I was ever that inconspicuous about this stuff.
So I kept on obsessing, kept on rereading, kept on collecting books on the care and feeding of an animal it was impossible for me to have in my life given my living situation. It didn't matter; as long as I was learning about ponies and reading stories about them, my imagination was, for the most part, enough. Books couldn't match the idea of caring for a real pony, but they kept my dreams filled with sunny days and forest trails.
By the next year, my room had become a full-fledged pony paradise, with much of the wall space covered with pictures of various breeds of ponies and, to a lesser extent, horses. I was nine years old, and my parents had pretty much come to accept my love of horses. My father didn't understand it, but my mother was supportive - and one parent's support is better than none.
But in the fall of that equine-filled 1981, my obsession for ponies was about to take a rather different turn, thanks to a commercial I saw one Saturday morning that went something like the one below, except in English. I searched high and low for the English-language version, and couldn't find it, so this will have to do - but the English one was basically the same, except if I recall correctly it took place outside at a park, or somewhere similar to that.
And there it was - MY PRETTY PONY.
I remember that I didn't care that it was clearly intended for a child younger than myself. I didn't care about anything but what I was seeing in that commercial. Only one thought was running through my head - if my parents can't get me a real pony, they'll get me this one.
The hypnotic sight of that golden mane being gently combed sent me into a paroxysm of avarice. The fact that it could blink its eyes and came with accessories like a tie & ribbon and a blanket made me covetous beyond measure. I had to have it.
For anyone reading this who's currently wondering: yes, I do realize this essentially makes me sound like Veruca Salt.
But I realize now that there was something else going on that day. Just as adults buy expensive cars and lavish homes to make themselves feel like who they imagine they are, to impress others with their opulent surroundings, I was doing the same thing in a way, to compensate for all the myriad ways I had to hide, had to compromise, had to pretend I wasn't dealing with the issue of being seen as a boy while at the same time knowing the world was crazy, that I wasn't a boy, that I was a girl. I knew it, but the fact that so many parts of the universe didn't know it was obviously a source of endless frustration.
I realize now that when I saw that pony and the little girl combing its hair, I wanted to put myself in those surroundings, transferring so much of my frustration into that plastic figure. In the moments it took me to watch that commercial, I projected my frustrations into that toy and decided that by owning it, I would show those frustrations that they had no power over me, that I could be a girl playing with MY PRETTY PONY and nobody would be able to say anything different about who I was than how I saw myself.
I recognize now, of course, how ridiculous I was being, but that didn't stop me from making that childish decision at the time. One of the things I've staunchly refused to do with my history is try to make it different or better than it was. I vowed at the start of writing this that I would write openly and honestly about the bad times in my personal history, times I've been small-minded, times I've been petty or greedy or displayed characteristics that weren't exactly the most heroic, despite the focus of the blog stories being on inspiration. So, yes, I was a greedy little brat who wanted a toy pony and wanted it immediately. I'm not proud of it, but that's how the story went, so that's what I'm writing here on this blog.
That Christmas, I took a chance, adding MY PRETTY PONY to my Christmas list. When the family took me to the local mall to see Santa Claus, I did not mention my desire for the pony toy. The mall was a public setting, and not one within the venue of my control, and as a result I knew I couldn't count on things like a "boy" asking for a "girl toy" with any certainty as to the outcome.
What if it went badly? What if someone yanked down my trousers to show the world that I was "wrong" about being a girl?
Believe it or not, that was an actual anxiety I had as a child, being physically "outed" as having a male body. It was one of the reasons I often wore suspenders cinched into my belt loops around that time, to ensure that my dignity would be preserved and that nobody would try to disrupt my sense of identity.
So, no, Santa at the mall couldn't be an ally in this quest. Instead, I had to resort to the quiet thunder of the Christmas List to get my point across. I carefully wrote out a thorough description of MY PRETTY PONY, and also added a subparagraph detailing how the toy would help me learn to care for a pet of my own, especially if I someday worked with horses. At the time, I still wanted to be a veteranarian, so, of course it was sensible that I wanted MY PRETTY PONY, right? Right.
My parents never discussed my Christmas List with me. I think they recognized that any discussion of the gifts I wanted beyond my adamant reminders of the items on the list might lead to me discovering what gifts I was actually going to get. If they kept silent on the gifts as a rule, I couldn't wheedle out of them which ones I was going to get. Christmas was something of a cat-and-mouse game in this way, with me trying to souse out any factual information about my gifts as soon as possible. I was rather impatient.
But, eventually, despite the agonizing passage of time, Christmas finally arrived. I wish I had pictures of that Christmas, but I don't. I remember the gifts I got that year, but nothing compared to the box that had been wrapped in reindeer paper and marked with a little tag that identified it as coming from Santa. An aside: I have to wonder if Santa delivered it because all my gifts from my parents were from "Mom and Dad" - did my father refuse to acknowledge that such a gift as the item shown in the image below could have come from him and therefore had to have arrived in our household as a result of intervention from the North Pole? The world will never know, but what I know is that the year I got MY PRETTY PONY was a magical year for me for many reasons, not the least of which was a silly plastic toy that helped me be the girl I knew I was inside whenever I combed its hair and fed it imaginary sugar cubes.
The year was 1980, and I was eight years old. This was the first year I was exposed the hypnotic and inescapable draw of the Scholastic Book Club.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the Scholastic Book Club in all its myriad forms, let me briefly explain. It was a little paper flyer that the teachers would hand out to grade-school students every so often. Featured in each page would be various literary items available for purchase, along with other things like posters and the latest issue of various grade-appropriate kids' magazines. I couldn't find one from the exact year 1980, but I've found a good representation from close to that year right below this paragraph for you to peruse, if you've never seen them. If anyone has a color Scholastic Book Club flyer from the exact year 1980, I'd love to add it to this article. For now, here's the close approximate example flyer.
Now, regular readers of this blog know that as a child I loved books. I still love books. I honestly don't know how I could have gotten through my life so far without them.
I love the smell of books. I love the feel of the covers. I love their weight in my hand. So it's probably no surprise that when I would get these flyers, I wanted to order just about everything in them.
Reality, and my parents' budget, didn't work out that way, but I'd still end up checking off more boxes than any of my classmates. When the books arrived weeks (months? I don't remember) later, everyone else in class would have two or three books. I'd usually have over a dozen or so, along with the odd poster or two that usually featured an image of some animal that was more often than not similar to this:
To say I was - and still am - a total push-over when it comes to people trying to sell me pictures of cute animals doing cute things is a complete understatement.
Nevertheless, I was beholden to my parents' budget, and they only had so much tolerance for funding my decorative ambition of covering every square inch of my room with pictures of things like pigs in boots and bunny-rabbits sniffing flowers, so I had to be careful with what I asked for in this way, judicious with my ordering and my wall space.
But one subject that could always be counted on for me to beg for the poster was when the subject was horses.
This was also true of the books about horses. Horse books were an easier issue to address than posters, because I had an inside track to acquiring them - my mother. She was incredibly fond of horses, herself, this was a one of the places where I could get away with liking something that was "for girls" without having to explain it away to my father.
If Denny-Mike wanted books about horses, Denny-Mike could have books about horses - that was her reasoning, and I was just fine with it, because it meant I got to read books about horses, even if they were considered to be "for girls."
And I wanted every single book about horses that appeared in the Scholastic Book Club, not to mention non-horse books on a variety of other fiction topics that might have seemed to my peers to be "for girls."
 |
So, I reasoned that I had to be cunning. I had to think ahead to how the books would look when they were all together when they arrived from Scholastic. I had to think of how I'd explain the books I chose if my peers asked me questions. So, I would actually sit down with the Scholastic Book Club flyer and try to work out how many "books for girls" I was interested in, and then also get other books I was also interested in so the result would be "balanced" in my view, to "hide in plain sight" as it were, to avoid being too obvious.
There were a few guaranteed options that could always be counted on to help me achieve that balance. I harbored a mean crush on Encyclopedia Brown at the time, and there'd always be one of those books offered in the flyers. I'd make a point of putting that book on top of the pile of books that ended up on my desk, so anybody walking past me would see the daring boy detective -
- or this -
.jpg)
- or, most especially, anything that looked anything remotely like this:
I say "especially" regarding SUMMER PONY, by Jean Slaughter Doty, because I was quite literally obsessed with that book, and in particular the edition with the cover I've posted above this paragraph. For whatever reason, I strongly identified with the girl on the cover - Ginny - and liked to imagine myself going on adventures out in the world with a beautiful pony like her Mokey.
I couldn't even begin to count how many times I read SUMMER PONY. I wore my copy down to the point where the cover was destroyed, but I had stared at it for so long it had burned into my memory.
Sometimes, I remember, I would finish it and then start reading it again without even taking a break. My eight-year-old brain simply thrilled to the adventures of Ginny a Mokey in this book, and its sequel WINTER PONY. I've linked to Amazon.com, so curious readers who want to take my word for the awesomeness of these two books for any person of any age can find the correct editions. Beware the Stepping Stone versions, which contain simplified language. If you're getting them, look for the ones with the covers I've shown in this piece. They're the originals with the unmodified text (the links go to these versions).
.jpg)
In any event, it was these two books in particular, that led me into an obsession with all things having the slightest bit to do with ponies.
However, there was still the matter of keeping this burning obsession a relative secret, in as much as any eight-year-old kid can manage to keep a secret while decorating a bedroom with pictures of the secret.
Hey, nobody ever said I was ever that inconspicuous about this stuff.
So I kept on obsessing, kept on rereading, kept on collecting books on the care and feeding of an animal it was impossible for me to have in my life given my living situation. It didn't matter; as long as I was learning about ponies and reading stories about them, my imagination was, for the most part, enough. Books couldn't match the idea of caring for a real pony, but they kept my dreams filled with sunny days and forest trails.
By the next year, my room had become a full-fledged pony paradise, with much of the wall space covered with pictures of various breeds of ponies and, to a lesser extent, horses. I was nine years old, and my parents had pretty much come to accept my love of horses. My father didn't understand it, but my mother was supportive - and one parent's support is better than none.
But in the fall of that equine-filled 1981, my obsession for ponies was about to take a rather different turn, thanks to a commercial I saw one Saturday morning that went something like the one below, except in English. I searched high and low for the English-language version, and couldn't find it, so this will have to do - but the English one was basically the same, except if I recall correctly it took place outside at a park, or somewhere similar to that.
And there it was - MY PRETTY PONY.
I remember that I didn't care that it was clearly intended for a child younger than myself. I didn't care about anything but what I was seeing in that commercial. Only one thought was running through my head - if my parents can't get me a real pony, they'll get me this one.
The hypnotic sight of that golden mane being gently combed sent me into a paroxysm of avarice. The fact that it could blink its eyes and came with accessories like a tie & ribbon and a blanket made me covetous beyond measure. I had to have it.
For anyone reading this who's currently wondering: yes, I do realize this essentially makes me sound like Veruca Salt.
But I realize now that there was something else going on that day. Just as adults buy expensive cars and lavish homes to make themselves feel like who they imagine they are, to impress others with their opulent surroundings, I was doing the same thing in a way, to compensate for all the myriad ways I had to hide, had to compromise, had to pretend I wasn't dealing with the issue of being seen as a boy while at the same time knowing the world was crazy, that I wasn't a boy, that I was a girl. I knew it, but the fact that so many parts of the universe didn't know it was obviously a source of endless frustration.
I realize now that when I saw that pony and the little girl combing its hair, I wanted to put myself in those surroundings, transferring so much of my frustration into that plastic figure. In the moments it took me to watch that commercial, I projected my frustrations into that toy and decided that by owning it, I would show those frustrations that they had no power over me, that I could be a girl playing with MY PRETTY PONY and nobody would be able to say anything different about who I was than how I saw myself.
I recognize now, of course, how ridiculous I was being, but that didn't stop me from making that childish decision at the time. One of the things I've staunchly refused to do with my history is try to make it different or better than it was. I vowed at the start of writing this that I would write openly and honestly about the bad times in my personal history, times I've been small-minded, times I've been petty or greedy or displayed characteristics that weren't exactly the most heroic, despite the focus of the blog stories being on inspiration. So, yes, I was a greedy little brat who wanted a toy pony and wanted it immediately. I'm not proud of it, but that's how the story went, so that's what I'm writing here on this blog.
That Christmas, I took a chance, adding MY PRETTY PONY to my Christmas list. When the family took me to the local mall to see Santa Claus, I did not mention my desire for the pony toy. The mall was a public setting, and not one within the venue of my control, and as a result I knew I couldn't count on things like a "boy" asking for a "girl toy" with any certainty as to the outcome.
What if it went badly? What if someone yanked down my trousers to show the world that I was "wrong" about being a girl?
Believe it or not, that was an actual anxiety I had as a child, being physically "outed" as having a male body. It was one of the reasons I often wore suspenders cinched into my belt loops around that time, to ensure that my dignity would be preserved and that nobody would try to disrupt my sense of identity.
So, no, Santa at the mall couldn't be an ally in this quest. Instead, I had to resort to the quiet thunder of the Christmas List to get my point across. I carefully wrote out a thorough description of MY PRETTY PONY, and also added a subparagraph detailing how the toy would help me learn to care for a pet of my own, especially if I someday worked with horses. At the time, I still wanted to be a veteranarian, so, of course it was sensible that I wanted MY PRETTY PONY, right? Right.
My parents never discussed my Christmas List with me. I think they recognized that any discussion of the gifts I wanted beyond my adamant reminders of the items on the list might lead to me discovering what gifts I was actually going to get. If they kept silent on the gifts as a rule, I couldn't wheedle out of them which ones I was going to get. Christmas was something of a cat-and-mouse game in this way, with me trying to souse out any factual information about my gifts as soon as possible. I was rather impatient.
But, eventually, despite the agonizing passage of time, Christmas finally arrived. I wish I had pictures of that Christmas, but I don't. I remember the gifts I got that year, but nothing compared to the box that had been wrapped in reindeer paper and marked with a little tag that identified it as coming from Santa. An aside: I have to wonder if Santa delivered it because all my gifts from my parents were from "Mom and Dad" - did my father refuse to acknowledge that such a gift as the item shown in the image below could have come from him and therefore had to have arrived in our household as a result of intervention from the North Pole? The world will never know, but what I know is that the year I got MY PRETTY PONY was a magical year for me for many reasons, not the least of which was a silly plastic toy that helped me be the girl I knew I was inside whenever I combed its hair and fed it imaginary sugar cubes.
There was a sense of calm I rarely had in my life when I played with that toy. There was a sense of everything else in my life coming to a screeching halt. Difficulties and insecurities could wait - I was playing with my pony, feeding my pony, tending to my own insecurities and soothing them by the proxy of a skittish pony.
In a way, I realize now, I was helping to tame my own fears, overcoming my unwillingness to put out on display the things about myself that I feared might be exposed. When I played with the pony toy, it was a way of being proud of who I felt I was. Of course, none of this was conscious at that time. I was nine, and hardly given toward self-analysis of that kind.
That sense of finding joy in the calm repetition of action, of combing hair and feeding nonexistent sugar cube, continued when I discovered another line of toys that appeared around 1983, when I was 11 years old. Only this time, the fantasy element was compounded by a fairy-tale setting and a variety of nonexistent creatures. This was the year I was first introduced to MY LITTLE PONY, a retooled offshoot of MY PRETTY PONY.
I loved - loved - loved - MY LITTLE PONY. But here's the point I want to make clear - these ponies were not inspirations to me. They weren't really even characters, for the most part. The original MY LITTLE PONY property was, to put it kindly, rather bland by comparison to the adventurous stories found in the latest incarnations.
The characters went on adventures, yes, but there wasn't really anything to the ponies or the stories - they'd face a very mild crisis, for the most part, and overcome it. Sure, there were battles with evil wizards and winged demons early-on in the animated shows, but that gave way over the years to more and more banal settings and situations.
So, no - I wasn't finding inspiration in the ponies. But what I was finding was an outlet - a way to relax and be a girl in private, to let myself identify how I wanted in a setting that I controlled. And where other fantasy properties of the time like THE SMURFS and THE CARE BEARS were predominately made up of male characters, the ponies lived in a society where most of the decision-making was handled by women, which was a sort of relief. I spent enough time dealing with the "boys' club" at school - I didn't need it in my downtime, too.
I collected the ponies on-and-off throughout the following years, never really outgrowing them. I think it's healthy not to outgrow certain things. I honestly think that a lot of people, trans or cis or somewhere in-between, could benefit from taking a moment to sit down and play with whatever turns out to be their "pony toys."
That doesn't mean specifically MY LITTLE PONY. It could be a hobby they once enjoyed but have abandoned in the name of making "a career" for themselves. It could be looking at pictures of sailboats. It could really be anything, so long as it's simple and done for no other reason than for the simple joy of calming one's nerves and relaxing one's mind to the point where thoughts aren't really even a priority in the first place. I think far too much, and for me there's a true relaxation in arranging what are essentially pony figurines in different patterns, enjoying it like one of those "rock gardens" that serve no real purpose.
And it seems that more and more people are coming to agree with me about this philosophy, though not in the same way as I found myself brought to it.
The latest incarnation of MY LITTLE PONY is called MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC. And magic is a good term for it, because it has changed my perspective on people - and, to a degree, in how I view myself as well.
In this version of MY LITTLE PONY, six pony friends deal with challenges both internal and external to gain a better understanding of mutual friendship. This version does inspire me - but for a wide variety of reasons.
There are six primary characters, and each one represents a different personal virtue, as detailed in the MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC wiki:
Applejack – Honesty
Applejack possesses the element of honesty, the first element to be demonstrated during the journey. Twilight Sparkle is hanging onto a cliff's edge and is bewildered when Applejack seriously tells her to let go. Applejack says that if Twilight will trust her and let go, she will be safe. Twilight Sparkle lets go and Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy catch her and carry her to safety. The element of honesty manifests as a gold necklace with an orange and green apple-shaped gem, The gem's shape is similar to Applejack's cutie mark. Her element is depicted by an orange gem.
Fluttershy – Kindness
Fluttershy possesses the element of kindness. When the friends encounter an angrymanticore, they decide to fight it, but Fluttershy intervenes and calmly approaches the beast. She discovers that a thorn stuck in its paw is causing the manticore discomfort. She removes it and calms the beast who then licks her face thankfully and lets the ponies pass. The element of kindness manifests as a gold necklace with a pink butterfly-shaped gem, shaped similarly to her cutie mark. Her element is depicted by a pink gem.
Pinkie Pie – Laughter
Pinkie Pie possesses the element of laughter. The friends are frightened by trees with scary faces, but Pinkie Pie just use her optimistic spirit to laugh and makes funny faces, causing the faces on the trees to vanish in pink smoke. She explains that they can conquer their fears just by laughing at them. Her element manifests as a gold necklace with a blue balloon-shaped gem that looks similar to her cutie mark. Her element is depicted by a blue gem.
Rarity – Generosity
Rarity possesses the element of generosity. The friends are unable to cross a river because a sea serpent, who is upset about his ruined mustache, is agitating the water. Rarity, who is angered by this "crime against fabulosity," sympathizes with him and cuts off her own tail to repair his mustache. The grateful sea serpent then helps them cross the river. Her element manifests as a gold necklace with a purple diamond-shaped gem, similar to her cutie mark. The necklace itself is also similar to Princess Celestia's necklace. In The Return of Harmony Part 2, it appears to be more of a magenta color in the box that Twilight Sparkle finds it in. Her element is depicted by a purple gem.
Rainbow Dash – Loyalty
Rainbow Dash possesses the element of loyalty. The ponies' progress to the castle is stopped when they see a broken rope bridge. Rainbow Dash volunteers to fly over and tie the other end of the bridge, but is confronted by a group of dark ponies who call themselves The Shadowbolts. They flatter Rainbow Dash and invite her to join them as their captain, as long as she abandons her friends. Rainbow Dash is tempted by the allure of becoming part of an elite flying group, but ultimately declines The Shadowbolts' offer and ties the bridge, letting the others cross. Her element manifests as a gold necklace with a red thunderbolt-shaped gem, similar to her cutie mark. Her element is depicted by a red gem.
Twilight Sparkle – Magic
Twilight Sparkle possesses the element of magic, described as the most powerful and elusive element of them all by Discord. Twilight activates the Elements of Harmony through a "spark" within her that ignites upon hearing her friends arrive to her aid. Her element manifests as a gold tiara with a magenta star-shaped gem, similar to her cutie mark. It was originally the purple gem in the opening narration. Her element is depicted by a magenta gem.
These virtues are explored in every episode of the show, in ways that are delightfully straightforward. In an era where so much material presupposes a "sophistication" on the part of the audience that I think simply masks a deep and abiding cynicism, it's nice to see a program - and a property - that respects sincerity and open appreciation of the fundamentally-positive traits of humanity.
What fascinates me about this show most, though, is how a series of amazing talents - the animators, the voice performers, the musical composers, the songwriters, the scriptwriters - have come together and taken something which essentially had no meaning nor purpose, the things I call "soul," and turned it into something beautiful that's more than just a means to shut off the stresses of the outside world like a rock garden.
And it's had an affect on people I would never have expected.
These simple stories, simple characters - they've inspired fans all over the world to create art and music, to add beauty to the world, to add the virtues that make up the Elements of Harmony, to bring positivity.
Where I felt I had to hide my love of the ponies in my childhood, a new generation of fans can proudly sat they enjoy these characters. Male fans of the ponies are called bronies, a combination of "bro" and "pony." Female fans often call themselves "Pegasisters" after "Pegasus" and "Sister." But, regardless of age or gender or other social strata, there's a group in such unity that it knows no shame in its ranks. Fans go to conventions for the ponies, dress up as the characters, wear their love of them on their sleeve.
And I love that.
I love that I find myself in a time when something this beautiful, this true, can be enjoyed by people of all types - all genders, all identities - with the fundamental line of thought about all of it being one simple word: harmony.
I find myself looking back on the road that led me to my love of MY LITTLE PONY, that led me here to this point, when I - a transwoman who as a child used to try to lose myself in combing the hair of a toy pony in secret - can see a time when people boldly state across a medium that reaches the entire world that they love these characters, this world, these ... ponies. They can say it with pride; they can say it with dignity; they can say it with joyous abandon.
I love that people can show that kind of honesty.
I love that people can show that kind of kindness.
I love that people can share in that laughter.
I love that people can express that kind of generosity with each other.
I love the loyalty that fans of the show have for each other.
And I think about watching the world change into a world that allows these sorts of feelings to exist - and I'm quite sure it's some of the most amazing magic I've ever experienced.
That said, Rarity is best pony.
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