Watch with Father - My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

Oh my God! What is my daughter watching? This is so bright and saccharine and trashy and... and... Hey; this is pretty good.

So, I grew up with a vague awareness of My Little Pony through advertising. It was a symbol of tacky, disposable girl's toys (obviously very separate from tacky, disposable boy's toys,) and not something that I gave much thought to.

Then Arya started watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I despaired. I sighed. And then I got really into it, to the point that every time Arya wants to go back and watch her favourite episode again ('Magical Mystery Cure', aka "Rarity has Rainbow Dash's cutie mark," the final episode of Season 3,) I get frustrated because damnit I want to know what happens in the rest of Season 4 already!

It's Q. No, really; Discord is voiced by
John de Lancie and somewhat based
on Star Trek's Q.

For those who don't know, MLP:FiM tells the story of Twilight Sparkle, a bookish unicorn, who is sent by her mentor to live in the rural cosmopolitan utopia of Ponyville - along with Spike, a baby dragon who acts as her PA and fax machine - and learn about friendship. Here she meets and reluctantly forms friendships with boisterous party pony Pinkie Pie, perfectionist couturier Rarity, hard-working farm girl Applejack, brash daredevil Rainbow Dash, and shy veterinarian Fluttershy. Together they represent the six aspects of friendship - laughter, generosity, honesty, loyalty, kindness and magic - and turn out to be able to harness the mystical elements of harmony and make evil explode.

Yeah; like... 85% of the episodes involve some comedic scrape and an important lesson about friendship, while the rest involve using those lessons to defeat cosmic evil, as you do.

What's impressive about the series, apart from the use of one-shot and visual gags clearly aimed at an older audience (Pinkie Pie deliberately setting up a spit-take, Fluttershy's woodland friends trying to boil Rainbow Dash in a parody of early Hollywood cannibals, or a Yakety-Sax chase sequence in which a phoenix wears a false beard in a nod to A Hard Day's Night) is the range of personalities within the 'Mane Six'. Far more than just the smart one, the sporty one and so on, they range from the highly feminine Rarity, through tomboyish Applejack to Rainbow Dash, who is one pronoun from actually being a transtallion (Arya recognises that Rainbow Dash is a boy and won't hear otherwise.)

The series also gives a purpose to the cutie marks, those logos on the ponies butts, which appear when a pony discovers some special talent or destiny. There is even prejudice against those who have yet to find their talent (called 'blank flanks' by Ponyville elementary's regulation queen bee.)

What self-respecting human parent names their daughter 'Rainbow Dash'. Is
Dash her surname, and if so why does she use it all the time?

And then there's 'Walking Feet', which is Arya's name for Equestria Girls, a spin off featuring human versions of the pony characters (which is kind of weird) who share their personalities, voice actors and - strangest of all - names. It's... It's weird as all hell is what it is. For my money the Equestria Girls films (there are three TV movies, rather than a series) aren't as good as the original, but that might just be because they raise so many questions. What kind of name is 'Shining Armour' for a human child? Why aren't people freaking out more when magical shit happens? Does this world have an REM?

Also, the human forms of the Mane Six are all more overtly conventionally feminine, just because they wear clothes all the time.

My Little Pony has proven an unexpected treat, even if it does keep me up at night wondering exactly how their bizarre meritomorphocracy (Equestria is ruled by princesses who are all alicorns - winged unicorns - but Twilight Sparkle turns herself into an alicorn and is apparently given royal rank on merit, but we never meet any deadbeat alicorns) works.