>>10206
It’s been commented on to death, but there’s just no way for an adult to watch this episode and see Dash and Gilda’s friendship as platonic, I reckon – at the very least it’s an angle I can’t imagine the creators being unaware of, even if it was accidental or unintended in some way.

Anyways. I like that Pinkie Pie actually tries to take Twilight’s advice to heart as she watches Gilda in the market, attempting to judge her favourably. Taking advice is another thing that I feel like Pinkie increasingly does less and less and time goes on. Granny Smith's reaction to Gilda's tail was odd - does it ever come up that Granny has bad eyesight? Or do some snakes in Equestria really look like that? It has a weird parallel in the next episode too. I was also fascinated by the line “She’s also a thief! ...No no no, maybe she’ll give it back later.” and uh – Pinkie, she ate it! She ate the apple whole, even the core! Reminds me of that bit from the Boondocks about borrowing a french fry – you gonna give it back? Also it occurs to me that Gilda’s confrontation with Fluttershy was kind of set up earlier in the episode where Pinkie says that Fluttershy’s too sensitive for pranking. And it’s also the part where Gilda exposes herself as a New Yorker.

The party is a little weird – Rainbow Dash says she set up all the pranks, but clearly the electric buzzer Pinkie uses is something Pinkie was aware of. Dash also says not all the pranks were specifically for her, which seems potentially true, but some are definitely intended for her. The presents, for example – presumably those are all for Gilda, so naturally that prank was intended for her. The candles are an obvious one too. I find it hard to believe that someone so detail-oriented when it comes to parties as Pinkie could be unaware of the pranks Rainbow set up, so I find it tricky to believe that she was as unawares as she claimed to be at the end of the episode. If I were cynical I’d even say she might have suggested the idea to Dash, but who knows, Pinkie’s mind works in mysterious ways.

I was also intrigued by the fact that at the end of the episode, Celestia begins writing out a reply to Twilight. Does she reply to all Twilight’s letters? In effect that would make it a correspondence. It’s also something left out when the journal gets published way later in the show, it occurs to me. The religious significance of the Princess in Equestrian society is overblown in the fandom, but it is based on existing themes within the show, and it makes me wonder if under Twilight’s reign as Princess, the journal and her correspondence with Celestia all get compiled together into a kind of Princess-endorsed philosophy on friendship, which, after all, we eventually find out is not just friendship as we understand it, but a kind of model of social harmony that makes Equestria both successful and free from creatures like the Windigoes. It’s the kind of book I could see future Equestrian colts and fillies having to learn in school. It’s interesting to think about, but for now I’m watching mostly without thinking about the fact that Twilight’s going to become an Alicorn, except for these posts. It is an interesting idea – basically you get to see over the course of the entire show what kind of life experiences go into making a Celestia-type figure (they say later on that Cadance’s daughter is the first naturally born Alicorn, so part of me assumes that far back in the distant past, Celestia began as someone very much like Twilight, and had a similar path to her ascension, probably with Starswirl as her mentor).