Here be spoilers

Sorry, no knitting content. Yesterday I was involved with work (or church stuff) from 7 am until 8 pm, excepting a half-hour of piano practice and taking the time to fix my dinner.

(And I will note, just in passing: It really rubs the wrong way a 'faithful member' who may not have quite as much money for giving - but who gives any way - to sit in a meeting and hear about how we need to work hard to  "court" the inactive members, particularly the ones who "give a lot of money when they remember to give." I know it's wrong to cast myself in the role of the Prodigal Son's Older Brother, but....it's not good to feel taken for granted. And I'd also note, in passing, the story of the widow's mite. I get that we're really small, I get that we have money problems. I'm doing what I reasonably can to help. But I wound up sitting there wondering, "What am I, chopped liver?" I don't know if anyone else felt that way, and probably my feeling that way was largely a function of grading myself to death, staring down a big bowl of raw cabbage for dinner, and not getting any time to do what I particularly wanted to do)

So anyway. After here be spoilers for the season #3 opener of what we fans often refer to as MLP: FiM.

Celestia is worried. (And we see the little prime minister/secretary pony - the one with glasses and an updo that I think a few fans named Sarah Tailin' - attending her. I guess little Sarah has had a rise in her pay grade; we last saw her assisting the Mayor (Mare?) of Ponyville)

Twilight gets summoned to the Princess' castle. (And we see Luna and Celestia at least nominally working together here). Something's wrong. So she and her friends are to go investigate. And Twilight will face a test and - this is important - SHE has to be the one to do the test. Herself.


So they travel north. (Slightly jarring image - the candy-colored Happy Pony Train chugging its way into an area overtaken by some dark force). Meet up with Shining Armor, Twilight's brother, dressed kind of like the way the Rebel fighters were on Hoth, and he warns them to get into the Crystal Empire - because they don't want to be out on the plains after dark.

Turns out the Crystal Empire is some kind of ancient city that disappeared for 1000 years and now is back. Shining Armor and Cadance (and it pains me to spell her name that way. I get that "Cadence" isn't copyrightable and apparently there's some Disney pop star called that, but intentional misspellings BUG me) are protecting it.

Cadance is in a bad way. (Creepy moment for me #1 - how unwell they could make her look by merely accentuating the thinness of her face.) She's exhausted herself issuing a protection spell. (Apparently, the more magic a unicorn does, the more he or she gets worn out).

So the Mane Six's job is to figure out what is necessary to protect the Empire; apparently it was protected just fine in the before-times. But something King Sombra (ugh, another intentionally-misspelled name) did something to change that.

Naturally, Twilight is excited: RESEARCH! So they first try to talk to the allegedly-crystal ponies. All of whom sound somewhat like Daria Morgendorfer. It turns out the lack of enthusiasm is fear....they don't even want to remember King Sombra, or even the time before him. Apparently he drove the ponies into outright slavery...and Celestia and Luna turned him to "living shadow." (Not sure if that's an indication of his power - that they couldn't kill him outright - or that they had some misplaced mercy for him)

So, along with a few silly moments (Pinkie Pie in ninja garb to go spying; Fluttershy too afraid to butt in and ask two ponies moping at a cafe table), the Mane Six give up. Until they find the library!

But even the librarian can't remember. Or doesn't want to remember. (Okay, that's creepy moment #2: something so bad you don't want to remember ANYTHING associated with it, and just live in kind of a gray fog of detachment).

And a lesson from the show, unless it's my over-interpretation of it: "If you forget your history, you're in big trouble." The Ponies have to search and search until they find a book of Crystal Empire history. (I guess Equestria never heard of the Dewey Decimal system).

But the last page is ripped out, as it turns out. (Another thing I might be over-interpreting: "Those who damage library books will DOOM US ALL.")

Solution! They just need to throw a big party and all the love and the joy of the Crystal Ponies will make this crystal heart thingie activate, and then the empire will be protected again!

(Another lesson: Love and harmony and happiness are important to our survival; they provide an inoculation against hate and fear)

Of course, it's not that simple. Oh, the Mane Six set up booths (Rarity doing some kind of traditional craft that is somewhat similar to making corn-dollies or straw weaving; Fluttershy tending a petting zoo of pastel sheep (which probably made all the knitters watching squeal in delight....wool dyed right on the animal's back! It would never fade!)).

The Crystal Ponies get moments of turning back to their old form. (One of the cool things the animators did? The hairstyles are different from the Ponyville/Canterlot ones: these aren't just clone-ponies.) Also, Crystal Empire Style seems to recall a (fanciful version of) ancient Greece - lots of updos on the ladyponies, with things woven into their hair. And jewelry. And draperies that seem vaguely ancient Greece, or perhaps Byzantine. Sort of interesting and I'd like to see a bit more worldbuilding there. 

But the crystal heart is not to be found.

So....and this is another case of How Not Understanding History and the Reasons for Our Traditions May Doom Us....Twilight figures she can just MAKE one.

Turns out, it has to be the actual-factual heart, or it doesn't work. So the Mane Five are forced to stall all the Crystal Ponies (Fluttershy getting pushed into jousting with Rainbow Dash, which might provide fuel for my hypothesis that Cloudsdale is actually like Ancient Sparta, where young pegasi are taken from their families, sent to "academies," and trained....also drawing on the idea that in ancient Equestria, apparently the pegasi were the warrior caste, or at least that's according to the Hearth Warming Eve episode).

Twilight sets off to find the crystal heart. Spike finally persuades her to let him go with her, by promising to "not lift a claw to help," as Twi is still focused on the "You must complete this task ALONE" part of the test.

Lesson #3: If your friends want to go along with you, even if you think you have to go it alone, let them. Because they might wind up totally saving everyone.

A bit of scary magic ("I saw Celestia do it") reveals stairs down to some kind of dungeon where Twi thinks the heart might be.

So she sets off. And finds doors. When she finally gets one to open.....well, that's probably the scariest part of the whole episode. It's a door to your worst fear. In Twilight's, we see her return to Canterlot, where Celestia is frighteningly cold and indifferent to her. ("The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference" - Elie Wiesel). There's also, and I didn't catch it, but TV Tropes points it out - a scary window depicting the alternate reality: "it had Twilight being sent hurling down onto crystal spikes that are engulfed by a pit of flames while a truly terrifying depiction of Sombra looks on." So not only did Twilight fail, but apparently she dies? Or something like that.

Anyway, Spike comes down and Twi manages to snap out of the vision. But then Spike goes up to the door. We don't actually SEE his worst nightmare (though I remembered it as we DID, that's how well they did it)....being rejected by Twilight and sent away.

I think it's instructive that both of these "worst nightmares" involve a rejection....a rejection by someone the person loved and looked up to. Or maybe I'm just responding to that because rejection is one of the HUGE bugbears in my life (perhaps it is so for everyone?) I experienced so much rejection at the hands of my peers from the age of about 6 until 14 or so (Yes, high school was actually better for me than grade school) that I've remained gunshy of doing things like asking guys out on dates, or approaching people to be my friend unless they approach me first, or being comfortable doing things like visiting the homebound. And I confess, I'm surprised these days to find that most of my peers seem to actually like me. I don't know if I changed or if my peers did....

Anyway, back to the Ponies. I think it's a remarkably mature thing to write into a show aimed at little girls. (Funny how "mature themes" as a marker on television programs usually actually means something fairly sophomoric is contained within).

Anyway.....more stairs. They find their way up to the highest tower, where the heart MUST be.

And, in fact it is. But Twilight, because she doesn't have Pinkie Sense (and I suspect, were it Pinkie Pie, she'd rappel down to the heart, Mission: Impossible-style), steps on an early-warning system Sombra set up.

And all heck (this is a children's show, after all) breaks loose.

Meanwhile, the Mane Five are trying desperately to keep the Crystal Ponies distracted and happy. (Hm. I suppose directly fighting Sombra is out of the question at this point, but....happy and distracted, not so good. They rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic...)

Twilight finds herself being encased in the Dark Crystals. (I don't know if there is Something For Us to See That They Did There or not). She realizes that she can't get the heart out to where it needs to be in time. She realizes she can't complete the test.
And then she realizes that Spike can. And with Spike's persuasion....she concludes that "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few....or the one."

And this is another "mature theme" that is both heartening and a little unsettling: perhaps sometimes we need to give up on our own specific dreams because there are others who need us.

So she gives Spike the heart. Which he carries to Cadance. Who is thrown (!!!) by her husband at Sombra (presumably, she has not the energy to take off, but can still glide). Sombra is vanquished (apparently he CAN be killed....or maybe not, I think his horn remained?). And the Heart is re-installed, and all of the crystal ponies power it up with their love and happiness.

And they all turn back to "crystal," which is essentially being sparkly and transparent. (And my inner literal-minded eight year old is going, "But wouldn't you be able to see their guts, then?") And the Mane Six also turn crystal and sparkly, but it doesn't last. (Whew. I had a premonition of it being a trope to go, "Hey, kiddies, all your ponies are now obsolete! Time to get your parents to buy you Ponies 2.0! But I guess Hasbro isn't that evil).

And I wonder if we'll hear from the Crystal Empire again. Or King Sombra, who turned out to be not that well-defined of a villain. Or maybe the idea was that he was so awful that the things he did were not to be spoken of. The scarier part was the fear of the crystal ponies...and that creepy door that shows you your worst fear.

Oh, and the "test"? Twilight passed. At first I thought, "Oh, wow, now that's a TEST: tell a control-freak that SHE must be the one to successfully complete something, well knowing that she will be rendered incapable of doing so, and will have to rely on someone she's excoriated in the past for being lazy."

But apparently - based on Celestia's comment something like, "It's better to have a student who knows when to use self-sacrifice" - Celestia didn't know. (So if she IS a Princess-Goddess, she isn't actually an omniscient one. Perhaps she's just a very powerful princess.....)


And thus ends my embarrassingly detailed descent into geekdom....