- Ryan Smith
Over the past few weeks, in preparation for last weekend’s My Little Pony Fair, I watched a lot of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. It is, I discovered, a really good show. During that period, I also read a few extensive reports on rape at college campuses and the psychology of rapists, interviewed two rape victims/survivors, and saw on the news that a young white man had attended a prayer meeting in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and then shot and killed nine people he’d been praying with, including the pastor.
It takes a lot of magic to lift an entire nation from a massive depression, but our heroic Ponyville ponies need only a single afternoon to find a solution: in an old history book, they discover that the not-evil pre-Sombra queen of the Crystal Empire used to hold an annual Crystal Faire, which raised every pony’s spirits and built up feelings of love and unity, which they somehow channeled into a big, magical crystal heart that would hold onto these feelings throughout the year. Whenever the empire was threatened, the crystal ponies drew on the heart to defend themselves. Sombra stole the heart and hid it away, but naturally the ponies recover it (of course they do!) and throw a Crystal Faire. Sombra is banished forever and light and color and hope are restored. Aha! I thought. My Little Pony is really a big crystal heart!
