@FanOfMostEverything
 
It’s where Canon meets Fanon and Headcanon.

@Nightweaver20xx
 
This is the point where I think, Do you need these?
 

 
Not literally. I’m aware of how boring (like into a rock) an ass-dead routine can be, having just sat around doing nothing in months from 2011-2012 getting more and more depressed even with Pony showing up, though the show did help stop some of that but really…
 
Not to get religious in the nonsensical term of the word, but it did help me in my circumstance to just walk into one particular church. It was difficult, but it was that or go back to sitting around rotting.
 
One of the things about MLP: FIM that I love is it relates real events and things that could happen, and oftentimes do. Fictional or not, it doesn’t matter.
 
You know what, here’s a song that I sometimes listen to when I’m on this subject; Oingo Boingo - Private Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuxss1kBQWw

@Background Pony #BB9B  
Yes, that’s the obvious read, but there are other levels to it. Possibly not intentional ones, but they’re still interesting.

I think people are taking this line too literally. To me it means if you dont have a goal your trying to reach(dream) you wont risk getting hurt/deceived if it ends up impossible(nightmare).

@Nightweaver20xx  
I’ve been there. Still am. I’d say welcome to my world, but there’s no real world here. It’s my nebula at most.
 
 
@FanOfMostEverything  
It doesn’t help that she refused to see the implications of her “perfect” world.

Its why I love this cartoon, it teaches such good lessons, On top of being high quality it has really important messages scattered through out.

@FanOfMostEverything  
Someone gets it.

@Josh103  
Ditto. I usually just drown out the musical numbers, but when I heard that line I was all like “…what?”

The biggest irony? Starlight Glimmer has an enormous dream. She dreams of utopia. Is it any wonder that the nightmare matched it in scope?

@BarryFromMars  
The sad thing is I think I may be turning into this. I do the same exact routine every day, between work and the internet and eating the same meals etc. I used to have dreams and aspirations of becoming a great comic artist, but those died shortly after 9/11, which happened only a few months after I graduated college. Since then it’s been a steady decline in any spontaneous acts I perform, and with no friends and no girlfriend, chances are I’ll just get worse until I turn into a virtual walking zombie in my 40s.

@Stainless Steel
 
You’re pretty close to seeing it even as it is now without me saying this: Does the phrase “Spiritually Dead” have any meaning to you? Like, a person can sort-of be there but at the same time they’re not? Where the body is alive, but the spirit is not. Like, just people walking around in the same deadening routine day after day as if they’re walking into daily grind machines that grind them to bits. And I kid you not, I’ve seen that in dreams - literally; People of ages from teenager to (maybe) in their 60s-70s asleep and being ground up in little stations on the sides of the paths in public. Not one of them woke up and broke the machine or asked for help. I didn’t say anything either, but I am now. If you ever dream this, GET OUT.

A typical little dystopian quote. Interesting to see it in FiM though!

@Nightweaver20xx
 
The scene that freaked me out the most was the one in the basement. That went from slightly weird to deeply uncomfortable very, very quickly.

…Trying to test that theory, are we?
 
 
@Stainless Steel  
No, this is about an entirely different sort of ceasing to live.
 
 
@MeshGearFox  
Would that stop it from being unsettling?

This creeped me the hell out when I heard it.

I can’t believe how creepy this was when I heard it. This whole opener felt like that episode of The Simpsons with The Leader. Only worse because they weren’t necessarily parodying anything – they were playing it dead straight.

@soundtea  

 
I imagine the young children that watch the show are /thoroughly confused/.

I don’t know why, but when I first heard this line I thought she was insinuating death. You know, as in ‘dreamless sleep’?

…did she steal the Star Rod from the Fountain of Dreams?

the phrase is in the song around 10 minutes and 20 some seconds in for those wondering.

This line belongs on a demotivational poster, but I can’t think of a picture grim enough to go with it.

Okay, this line legit gave me the chills.

She’s right, you know.

@The Smiling Pony  
This whole episode was probably the darkest it’s ever gotten.
 
The shed with loudspeakers and propaganda lines just took the cake.