I bet it was some guy on /co/ who wanted to horribly bash the show.

After the first episode he was like "wait a minute, this is a good show!"

And then he made a pony general and the rest is history.

Makes sense.

/co/ is one of the nicer boards. I mean he's like "My Little Pony Friendship is Magic? This should be fun to mock."

-He watches it-

"THIS IS AWESOME!" Say did anyone see the Doctor as a pony?

The more I think about it, the more I wonder why Twilight's friends didn't get tickets of their own in the first place, considering they helped save the world and all.

edited 29th Mar '11 8:20:23 AM by SpaceJawa

Trollestia.

'cuz they're not part of the equites?

edited 29th Mar '11 8:32:40 AM by Arilou

Gotta say, the kids growing up watching this show are going to have some weird mental associations going on when they get round to studying Doctor Faustus in school.

Maybe she didn't want to show too much favoritism. If she just sent them all tickets in the first place, they might be like "Sweet! This saving the world gig got us the Princesses' favor! Maybe I could just ask her to support my business/put in a good word with the Wonderbolts/let me visit her secret garden more often/PARTY HARD ALL THE TIME YEAH BABY!"

This way, it might be more acceptable. She's doing this for her prized pupil and her friends, and it doesn't seem like she's singling all the girls out for special attention.

Incidentally, now I'm wondering: just how aware is the public at large of the Elements of Harmony, and that these particular fillies each hold one of the elements? Just how much does your average everyday pony know about what happened with Nightmare Moon?

Honestly, I suspect the reason Celestia sent two tickets in the first place was specifically so that events would turn out the way they did, and the entire group would learn its Aesop of the week, thus making them more apt to wield the Elements of Harmony in the future if the need arose again.

I mean, putting aside how even Twilight was surprised by how quick Celestia's reply was...consider the Xanatos Roulette the princess set up in the pilot. I'm betting that she has some form of divine precognition that allows her to set these things up without too much effort...

For me it was a test to see if Twilight make some frends and see how much she learn about frendship. Those two tickets were for Twilight and Spike, propably her only frend before series. She supose ask for tickets for rest of main ponies or do what she did in episode.

(Must write WMG about that)

Speaking of this show's popularity online sometimes thinking about the target audience finding out about it in 5-10 years amuses me greatly. (Unless some already have, which would not surprise me)

What IS the target audience?!

Hey, guys, don't look now, but it appears that the little ponies are already walking among us.

<_<

^^I think it's elementary schoolers, primarily girls. (On Discovery's corporate site, The Hub is stated to aim for kids 6-12 and their families)

I love these horrible audio captions.

Apparently "I! Photo Finish! Have arrived!" is "five finish genocide". Who would've thunk?

These are not horrible, more like So Bad Is Good

I also love this.

My favorite is Angel Bunny called The Pope and intro mentioning marching army.

Rarity: "Back indefinitely don't worry! Birthday she's going to sleep. Are you going to love it?"

Fluttershy: "And syrup's team system for the operator permanently become immersed in the designer in the court's do want need!"

Christ, this show is everywhere. And damn my insatiable curiosity.

Seeing MLP things everywhere, I decided to watch the first two episodes online. Yes, I know, according to fans that doesn't make me much of a judge as it apparently changes in tone later on, but I'm just not sure where all of the appeal is coming from.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good show for kids, and a good show for little girls too (I suppose, I don't have incredibly young female siblings, and I'd rather not approach any little girls I'm not familiar with and ask them their opinion on the matter), but the fanbase is made up of everyone from the residual audience (namely, parents watching the show with their kids). This only happened one time before that I've seen with recent media: Free Realms, an MMO from Sony that was released a while back, was a game aimed at the younger MMO gamers, and instead interested people everywhere from older casual gamers to hardcore WoW raiders.

But where is all the appeal coming from? It's not that I hate the show (the art is fantastic, and the woman behind it has an incredible track record of making amazing shows), but I just don't understand all the hype behind it.

That, and my roommate (also a guy) is a big fan of the Power Puff Girls, and I'm so incredibly tempted to recommend him the show, just for the cocked eyebrow I know I'd get.

I'd give the tickets to Dr. Whooves and Derpy Hooves. Whether they wanted them or not.

At one point, the autocaptions seemed to think that Nightmare Moon was President Clinton. (He's been out of office for years! GET OVER IT, will ya?) Past that, I haven't really watched any episodes with it on (just starting the pilot now).

However, someone on Ponibooru found this little gem, which cracked me right the hell up.

And as for the tickets, I'd probably give the tickets to Fluttershy (I can't say no to Fluttershy! She asked so nicely, and she wants so little out of the night! And it's Fluttershy, for crying out loud, I wouldn't possibly have the hear to say no to her) and... um... You know what? Depending on if Twilight knew her by then, I think Zecora deserves a ticket. She's put up with enough shit, helped out when she had every reason not to, and, well, considering that she lives in the Everfree Forest, I think a night out might be good for her.

edited 29th Mar '11 4:13:50 PM by Scrounge

I think you'd probably find that everyone has a different reason for liking the show, and most of them find it pretty hard to quantify. Really, though, it's mostly a freak accident. Some blogger complained about the show, 4Chan found it and decided to see if it was as bad as she said, and decided they liked it. People found it so baffling that they just had to try it themselves, loved it, and spread the weird, and it just kept happening, over and over. Nobody expected it to be any good, but it was, so it took off.

edited 29th Mar '11 4:04:28 PM by kegisak

Watch the third episode. The first two episodes have a very different tone from the rest of the series. The third and fourth episodes are really necessary to get an idea of what the show is really all about.

Autocaption gave us Steven Magnet. That alone is awesomeness enough.

I did a Wall-of-Text post on another forum examining why it is people liked it...

---

Well, there's various ways of looking at it.

I really do enjoy the show, and if you look back in the thread you'll notice I really wasn't interested at all in beggining to watch the show. I too suspected the mass hysteria curbing the opinions of everyone came across the show. So I only began watching after the question became looming; "Why do people enjoy this show so much?"

We could begin by analyzing the praise which is appearing. We can readily assume that these reviews are not necessarily married to any given poster's opinion of the show - many people put their actual thoughts through a "MLP is manly" filter before posting it (4 teh lulz ofc!) and that may be why people who view the show afterwards appear underwhelmed. Now on the 20th episode, I can myself say that this a very well-polished piece of television, not something on the caliber of LOST or something like that, but it surpasses every expectation anyone had for a show about My. Little. Pony. The characters and the dynamic between them is superb for a kid's show and cliche elements are countered with clever writing. The show often touches subjects and makes references thing well beyond the age of the supposed target audience. And yes, the show is animated excellently. A show which exudes innocence in a world deprived of it.

How much this lowered bar affected the opinions of viewers, I can only gander at. I tuned in long after the craze had taken off, and honestly, I found the show very enjoyable. But of course, the show is not the visual manifestation of awesome the Internet makes it out to be, but honestly, if you've any knowledge of the Internet you should be savvy enough to know to take these things with a grain of salt. Specially when it comes to something which a memetic twist.

So, to close, this is actually a very well-made show from established talent. Even if it does gander into the "Show for elementary school girls" territory now and then, it manages to avoid that at large, which is a large part of the appeal.

---

I'm not a parent of a child watching it, nor war was I eager to jump into the craze, but I still enjoy. Do keep in mind, however, the memetic aspect of the show, and how it may affect not only what you think of it, but it may also warp the actual opinions of other regarding the show

Ergo, I think this show is actually quite nice —> Internet —> THIS IS THE BEST THING ON TV RIGHT NOW

edited 29th Mar '11 5:02:13 PM by Astrosimi

Thanks for the well thought out post Astro, that certainly helps.

I guess I'll have to keep watching to figure out what it's all about, but I did completely forget about the Memetic Mutation's effect on anything, primarily because when it comes around, I join in.

That, and I'm with the company, I find it a bit odd that there's so much talk about MLP coming from every other side, save for the target audience. Might just be me getting a bit grossed out though.

It's the internet, of course things are going to get exaggerated.