The Applejack Problem

so this is gonna be my least viewed video strapped in some of you guys know that I like My Little Pony and not just Star Wars it's really subtle but it's there well every like 10 years they reboot the My Little Pony franchise it's tradition and we're coming up on the newest reboot cycle which would be generation 5g 5 and I guess it is going forward because some hackers leaked a bunch of content allegedly from Hasbro about how it's all gonna go down and that's not OK but I read it it was super interesting to see all the inside talk about how they were gonna change the show and to me the most interesting was the Applejack problem see the current My Little Pony has six characters and they're all kind of common personality archetypes so you have like the tomboy and the bookworm and then the sixth one is just a cowgirl like like Cowboys a personality type and and this is a thing that I guess didn't resonate well with little girls go figure but what they were discussing in the emails is that this might mean some major changes to Applejack like getting rid of her or making her an antagonist or making her a boy and they were like whatever we do we definitely should not make her southern or a farmer anymore and I was like no we can't we can't lose Applejack like like you make her what like the song and dance Pony Applejack is the weirdest thing in my little pony and she can't go anywhere and I was like how would I solve the Applejack problem and it all kind of snowballed and my fevered mind so hear me out here is my generation 5 reboot of my little pony so first I'm gonna start with the setting I really like the current vibe where it's high fantasy but My Little Pony series that I grew up watching was My Little Pony tales and My Little Pony tales it's a very weird show in that series there was no magic they just kind of went to a school it was actually entirely incidental that they were horses it all was just kind of horses in a high school actually can that be what we call my reboot can it be called horses in a high school but anyway I think having school-aged characters is a really good idea for a kids show kids love boarding school stories and having your characters in school means that can learn new skills and sneak around and break rules so they're basically at horse Hogwarts and the school can be in a castle it can be a purple castle you can make it out of that sick clear plastic with sparkles in it and the school is in like a lush Valley with a spooky forest next to it so the alleged emails suggested that unlike other reboots they actually want to keep the current cast of six characters they just want to change them a little bit so in my reboot these ponies have all come to the school from different Pony kingdoms there are all different kinds of ponies just just think of the toy line variety okay you can have color-changing hair you can have metallic ponies you can have ponies that smell like desert I don't know how you convey that in animation but so this school is founded by the beautiful Princess Celestia and it is a school of pony magic and the school is called Sparkle swirl Academy the pinwheel rainbow berry school of Liberal Arts pony Magic School working title you're probably immediately like wait if this is a magic school why are they all here if only unicorn ponies can do magic which that's a wonderful question in this universe all ponies have some aptitude for magic and the ones with the greatest potential have been summoned to this prestigious school but all ponies need some kind of conduit in order to practice magic and it's not a magic wand we're not selling sticks at Toys R Us okay it's some kind of awesome jewelry thing like a bracelet or a necklace or a tiara and the toys can come with matching people sized ones and then the little girls can wear the matching magic conduits and they'll love it I think of everything so they need those to do magic and there's some kind of cool ceremony where they pick out the ones that they're going to use and that can be in the pilot episode but since they're just students when they're not in class the conduits stay locked up safe with the teachers which can be like a challenge to overcome so the ponies have all come to magic school working title and none of them have met each other yet so let's meet the cast okay so our protagonist is still Twilight Sparkle they did this weird thing in the current show where they introduced another pony that's like the same character their name is starlight glimmer which is an uncannily similar name so I'm gonna combine the two of them starlight glimmer is a little less bookworm and a little more mad scientist and I think that's cute so I'm gonna go with that so Twilight Sparkle is very curious she likes to take the spells that she's given and tweak them and try to invent new ones and improve upon them she's a unicorn I don't want her to have wings anymore she doesn't need them and I want her to wear glasses we don't know much about her backstory because princess celestia found her in the woods on the school grounds over the summer break and she took her in and Twilight Sparkle doesn't remember anything before that kids love mystery orphans and they love eggs that's why they love Elsa I like sparkle fields she owes a lot to Princess Celestia so she like hero worships her she's like let's hang out let's let's talk about magic Princess Celestia is like oh good she tries to keep her at arm's length kind of she puts out a vibe like she isn't comfortable with ponies being this familiar with her probably because she's royalty she gets updates about Twilight Sparkle's progress and she does not like that Twilight is taking this outside the box approach to magic Twilight Sparkle's been living on this empty campus all summer so she's super excited for the other ponies to arrive because she wants to make friends and this she doesn't hate friendship she just doesn't have friends so when we first meet Twilight Sparkle she's like wandering the castle grounds she's doing something dorky like rehearsing how her making friends is going to go there's like a little lizard that runs by on the ground and like since it's the cute pony world the lizard is purple and she puts her nose down to the ground she starts following the lizard and pretending the lizard is the one she's making friends with lizard doesn't speak English it's just a lizard so it's trying to run away it's all super cute and then she stumbles and she looks up in the lizard scampers away over like a piece of rubble and she looks up and she's somewhere on the castle grounds that she has never been before it's bits of wall like the crumbly remains of old rock walls and like old foundation Twilight trails off talking to herself she's like mmm she starts walking closer to look and then Princess Celestia shows up and she's like hey Twilight um the other students are I know you wanted to meet them rain are you excited let's go let's go say hi to them Twilight is immediately distracted she's like oh sweet and they walk away but Twilight of course does the cliche like look over her shoulder like what's that though so the rest of the cast have arrived and the first Pony that Twilight makes friends with his Pinkie Pie Pinkie Pie is like what people expect a My Little Pony to be like Pinkie Pie is so cuddly she is the biggest eyes and the fluffiest hair she has the same really high-pitched voice as the current Pinkie Pie and like the enthusiasm but the volumes brought down a little like she's a really good listener too she can go really silent and it's like scary silent she'll just sit near you when you need company and she'll stare at you with her big unnerving eyes I figure Pinkie Pie could be a good connecting device just because she could be the first friend that all of the other ponies made just by virtue of lurking around and being available as a friend I like the idea of Pinkie Pie being on rollerskates like constantly and especially in situations where you should not be in rollerskates like the ponies are having some kind of serious conversation with like exposition or something and the whole time you're just hearing this axle clomping sound of Pinkie Pie trying not to lose her balance on her rollerskates then one Pony is finally like pinkie can you take off your roller skates and pinkies like they're part of my shoes she's a good friend but nobody really gets what her deal is like you could walk outside and you'd find Pinkie Pie in a tree and she's just like slowly waving her arms over her head at a kite and the kite is like just out of reach it feels like she could reach it but she has this spaced out look in her eyes you're like hey Pinkie Pie what are you doing and she's like if you catch a kite you catch a wish you're like okay Pinkie Pie she moves like she's made of play-doh like her legs aren't connected to her body think he probably is so cute her design is really simple so I'm gonna make her a crystal Pony they're the ones with the clear bodies with the glitter inside they're so sick I picture the crystal ponies having like ancient Roman culture it sounds weird okay moving on to Rainbow Dash Rainbow Dash is like a pony she still got that jock thing going on from the last incarnation but now she's channeling into this weird authoritarian thing she's like Javert and she's a year above them and she's the hall monitor she always stands with her legs super strain and her chest puffed out and she wears some kind of cute like uniform hat I'm not a fashion designer so don't quote me on the Hat I want to make her shorter than the others and I also want to make her an earth pony the others aren't friends with her initially she's kind of like a comedic antagonist but then you know the things happen they become friends okay and now we're to the part with the Applejack problem the stuff in the alleged email mentioned making her like spunky and overcompensating for something and I like the idea of that I think kids like an underdog and they already established that they're okay with mixing up the body types of the different ponies so here's my thing how do we fix the hardest sell pony of the mane six by making her the coolest type of pony that's ever existed we're gonna make Applejack a flutter pony flutter ponies are from the 80s movie and they're like the elves of my little pony like they live in a valley in this weird sun-worshipping community and they have all this immense power but the other ponies come to them for help and they're like we could help you but we don't really want to get involved they're very dignified and mysterious I would be gesturing more emphatically but this is very precious to me her beautiful wings are very delicate okay flutter ponies are like the same height as other ponies but they have longer legs and skinnier builds and they have these really snooty looking bone structures on their faces so I'm like Applejack is still a farmer she is a farmer flutter pony the flutter ponies all have delicate nature names like rose dust and peach blossom and it's like there's Applejack she grows apples on the bad side of the valley the other flutter ponies are mean to her okay she's like the lowest of the flutter ponies but she got the scholarship it's a pony Magic School working title she sees this as her chance to reinvent herself to reboot herself a few will so when she gets there she's like no pony's gonna know that I'm a takes off her cowboy hat and she stuffs it in her bag cuz you better believe she still has a cowboy hats not Applejack without a cowboy hat you don't even really have to change her color palette although I think the orange should be softened a lot but she should definitely keep her freckles cuz they're cute so Applejack speaks in this stilted overly formal way because she's trying to hide her hick accent but I'm kind of thinking less Texas accent and maybe like a Georgia one when we first meet her she's almost like this eras rarity like she seems kind of prissy and vain but she's just overcompensating Applejack is extremely physically strong she can start a fire with her bare hooves she can navigate by the stars she can kill a rattlesnake I don't know no she doesn't she can track an animal let's go with that so she's like this great survivalist but all of this is revealed sort of grudgingly like she thinks it's embarrassing and all the other ponies are like no it's amazing and when she's stressed or excited her accent comes out a little stronger okay Fluttershy I hope you're ready for this Fluttershy doesn't even go here she's not a student at the school Fluttershy is a breezy Pony and they're like the fairies of the ponies they're like Tinker Bell sighs they are a secret community of magical beings and they live in the eaves of the school and they go through little mouse holes which the playsets can have built in obviously and they're definitely not supposed to interact with the big ponies so she doesn't join the group right away maybe for a couple episodes she's just kind of watching them from the corners maybe helping them in small ways without them realizing that she's doing it let her shy is timid but she has a strong natural curiosity and I like the idea of a joke where she seems impossibly shy by normal standards and then it's revealed that the rest of her community is like even more shy and they view Fluttershy is like this crazy punk rock rebel without a cause they speak in even milder even softer tones than she does and she says something like hesitant and pretty unshockable wildly different size for storytelling reasons because she'd be good at like espionage or picking locks but also from a toy line perspective all the different ponies toys are like mildly different from each other like you can't just get your favorite you need to get all six of them because this one's tiny and that one's sparkly and that one has wings and lastly we have rarity and she's not gonna change a whole lot I love rarity so she's still the artistic soul but I want like a goth rarity like she has goth eyeshadow and cool boots she's also a sophomore like Rainbow Dash and I pictured her being taller than the other one in this incarnation instead of fashion design her art is storytelling rarity is the drama club pony and she's also very into lore and mythology so she's really good for expository information but obviously she's a comedic character so she exaggerates stuff and things like get lost in translation and rarities the one who's like did you guys know this school used to have two founders there's the hall of the Sun where we all go to school but out on the castle grounds there's the ruins of the Hall of the Moon Princess Celestia is the Sun princess and she had a sister and they ruled the day in the night side by side but her sister Princess Luna was jealous of the daytime and she raised an army of dragons and mad with power she threatened to keep the world in eternal night and darkness and Princess Celestia had to banish her own sister and the legend has it that she locked her away in the moon and that's why the craters on the moon formed the face of a pony because legend has it that that's the evil princess luna watching and waiting to return and then Applejack says and her totally not an accent I'm sure Princess Celestia doesn't appreciate you telling stories about her family and then they get in some kind of petty argument about it but Twilight is looking up off-camera and Twilight's like would face in the moon and they're like huh why lights like I don't see any pattern on the moon they're like oh you have to look at the craters it's like it's a face in profile like and they all look up and the full moon is just this eerie featureless or the ponies are pretty spooked but they don't want to admit it so they're like anyway we better get back to the castle for rarity I like the idea of her being a glow-in-the-dark pony like first of all I think it's a cool toy feature but second I like imagining that she wants to go into her room and wallow and she draws her big velvet curtains and then her whole body just starts glowing lime-green the glow-in-the-dark Ponies live in underground caves it's like bioluminescence ok anyway I've talked about this longer than anyone wants to tolerate listening to it and I'm not gonna do like a whole play-by-play rundown of the pilot but basically the ponies path is all cross they become friends friendship is magic but emphasis this time on the friendship more than the magic this is weird but I feel like the strongest scene from the latest incarnation of My Little Pony is this scene where they're on a late-night train ride and they're all supposed to be asleep and they start having this whispered conversation and they're giggling and stuff and then the dragon character is like can you guys shut up cuz I'm trying to sleep and then one of the ponies is like well someone is feeling huffy puffy the magic dragon and then they all start giggling uncontrollably again like even in the context of that scene it was supposed to be a dumb joke and I just like for anyone that's ever been to a slumber party like you know at that moment it's like just being in an absurd situation with your friends and the excitement and the camaraderie of that feeling I think you can do good character-driven stories and adventure of the week stories without them feeling like they're low stakes or filler episodes and it would be a linear story and their relationships would continue to grow because they're not just like a group of friends they're like individual friendships with each other and like there's so much more I haven't even gotten into their individual magical talents or princess cadance and shining armor because yeah they're here too or the boy characters who would really round out the group or the rival schools and he might be like where's princess Lumina though the most popular character Princess Luna she didn't even show up what's her deal and the whole point is that that's a twist but you probably figured it out already because it's for kids and I was like planting the the hints there did you figure it out it's there it's all there so anyway that's why I think Applejack should still have a cowboy hat you okay the choice is that Twilight is Princess Luna this always made way more sense to me Twilight is a name that's about the night-time Princess Celestia was overcome by guilt so she brought her sister back but her mind is wiped she's like powered down baby Princess Luna and Twilight Sparkle's on the learning track for like plant growing magic and she's like I don't know if this is my talent I don't feel like I'm good at this and Princess Celestia is like no your talent is growing flowers congratulations and Twilight's like I kind of like astronomy right I mean while I'm here hey I thought of some modifications what if I give the flowers teeth and the princess is like yeah keep doing the flower thing you're doing great Twilight Sparkle she's right there she's just this little roiling ball of evil magic waiting to bust out unless unless things are different this time Princess Celestia is like oh I'm glad she's back but I have feelings of guilt I don't want her to turn evil again and she's pushing her away but it's painful because the sisters not understanding each other is what made her turn evil in the first place it's drama ho also the purple lizard was spike the dragon and made it purple on purpose it was an arbitrary psych

Channel: Jenny Nicholson

Views: 832,516

Rating: 4.916554 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: S4vKQbpOn5k

Length: 19min 6sec (1146 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 26 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/adashiel]

For those who don’t know, Jenny Nicholson was one-half of Sherclop Pones, which created the Friendship is Witchcraft series. Though she’s now better known in the Star Wars fandom, she’s been an MLP fan for a long time. Long before Friendship is Magic was a gleam in Lauren Faust’s eye. The video is less commentary about the leaks than it is her own ideas for Generation 5. Honestly, I think it would work. It’s kind of Friendship is Magic meets Harry Potter meets...Darth Revan.

Edit: Oh, and stick around after the ginormous patron list.

[u/pinky102368]

Hm, interesting. I like how she looked at all of the Generations and thought of all the toy possibilities, because that’s what Hasbro is thinking about. It isn’t just an epic pony story/world, it’s something Hasbro would actually consider.

When she first mentioned the pony magic school, I was thinking “meh, not the biggest fan of that type of stuff” but when she continued I actually could see myself enjoying a show like that. Jenny really has some good ideas.

[u/yimmyslimmyjacks]

I knew her as that Star Wars girl so was surprised to see this in my recommendations. Gotta admit after hearing all her ideas it just really puts perspective on how odd this is the show will be ending and then the next iteration immediately coming out. Like, wouldn't most shows have a period where nothing happens for at least a couple years before already putting out the reboot? Not much time to let things settle.

All I know is if G5 has Pinkie Pie on rollerskates, I'll know where that idea came from.

[u/The_Narrator_9000]

I'd watch it. She had me at Pinkie Pie constantly being on rollerskates. That will never not be funny.