I feel like it has a highly underrated moral that still resonates with me to this day.The moral isn't too outwardly explained but rather heavily hinted at which I think actually makes it stronger for the message it's trying to convey.The message is about not being close minded, specifically in the aspect of dismissing others who don't follow your line of thinking.A common thing you'll notice in this episode is that Twilight could've prevented herself from getting hurt during a lot of the episode had she chosen to not completely disregard the logic of the Pinkie sense which came off as utter nonsense to her.In her close mindedness, she ended up in unfavorable situations because she chose not to try and understand things from Pinkie's point of view.Twilight instead opted to try solving things with science which didn't end up working.Saying this episode's moral is bad is sort of like being Twilight in this episode where you only look at things from your point of view rather than trying to understand what the episode is actually trying to convey.In a way, it feels like the episode is pointing a mirror at the critics and subtly making fun of them.Point is, I always loved the moral here and it's helped me time and time again in understanding things through life.It's a moral that basically says that there will always be something new to learn and only by accepting it for what it is can you hope to gain new knowledge on things invisible to your line of thinking.Oh, and also the episode is really funny, but that's just a cherry on top.
The episode reminds me a lot of this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_AGJy6qv4M
>>41033590The episode is actually about believing in fundamentalist religion Anon
>>41033590It was one of the two episodes where the show managed slapstick comedy really well.The other one was It's About Time.
>>41034420The Church of Ponk, the only church that matters.
>>41034444The quads speak truth
>>41033590Twilight failed. She did bad science.The most basic form of science as we practice it is to create a hypothesis which is testable and then test it, preferably with a control test, preferably multiple times. What twilight did was closer to research and was done in an anecdotal format. She was driven by what she "just figured" would happen, what seemed reasonable. She ignored warnings and got hit a bunch, placing repeated bets that something wouldn't happen without tying the results to anything. She spent time and effort looking for alternative explanations while ignoring the data that she could have been collecting. Twilight was focused on finding a cause without first checking if there was an effect.Pinkie did science. She observed that when certain symptoms occurred, certain results followed. When explaining herself she talks about "usually" and "sometimes" and a large backlog of experiences which she is drawing from which are empirical.Eventually, twilight gains enough experiences that she has to take pinkie's claims seriously, but she doesn't actually have the evidence to say pinkie sense really exists.There is an obvious visual metaphor and a blunt and direct line that gets people worked up.>Pinkie Pie: It's your only ho-o-ope! You have to take a leap of faith!Twilight jumps to her apparent death but then lives after this.This is where the religious angle comes from. This supports the semi-religious form of faith which is belief without or against evidence, complete with a threat and a semi-rebirth. That, and the false aesthetic appearance that twilight is being scientific. At the end of the episode, twilight is taking physical action based on the pinkie sense. Twilight doesn't just "have an open mind." She obeys. The climax is her deflating, surrendering, changing her rage out for sadness. She's not thinking anymore. She's not just open minded. She's not actually open minded at all. She doesn't think the pinkie sense COULD be real, she thinks it IS real, and that her mind is totally helpless against it. Twilight Sparkle: Rrrgh... [flames and growls] Ooh... I give up...Spike: Give what up, Twi?Twilight Sparkle: The fight. I can't fight it anymore. I don't understand how, why, or what, but Pinkie Sense somehow... makes sense. I don't see how it does, but it just does. Just because I don't understand doesn't mean it's not true.Twilight Sparkle: What's wrong, Spike? Never thought you'd see me with an umbrella hat on?Spike: Not really, no.Twilight Sparkle: Pinkie's tail's a-twitchin'. What else can I do?
>>41034699She's turned her mind off, and only because the alternative is stressful and painful, even though she's the one who made it so stressful.The "Doozy" also wasn't what twilight assumed it was. When Twilight finally accepted the evidence of pinkie's mystic powers, she assumed that the hydra and the leap of faith must have been "the doozy." This is because "the doozy" was not a specific prediction. There was never any way to prove that the doozy was or wasn't real. AFTER twilight believed in pinkie, pinkie claimed that twilight's change of heart was the doozy. This particular pinkie-sense was not based on history and was not settled science. It could have meant anything or nothing, and THIS is the one twilight accepted.In short, the episode's fucked. It's fun, which is like half the value, but it muddles it's narrative until you just kind of have to make shit up and project whatever you want onto it. We can assume that any flaws are simply the fault of the writers and that they had a better idea in their head that they just failed to execute on. You can project better morals onto it. But, taken as written, the moral, directly from twilight's mouth, is that proving and understanding shit is too stressful. The moral taken from her actions is that refusing the evidence of your eyes while obsesivly trying to prove a negative is too stressful. Or, in the letter to celestia, the moral is that a lack of understanding a thing doesn't make that thing false, which would be a good moral in a better version of this episode.And the moral for the writers is to avoid the word faith unless you're ready and you know what you're doing.
