Text version:
Feeling Pinkie Keen is by far one of the most divisive episodes of My Little Pony. It’s an incredibly confusing episode for sure; Twilight’s indignation towards Pinkie’s abilities seems to come out of nowhere, and the episode’s moral lesson about having faith in things that don’t make sense seems to fly in the face of scientific reasoning, which isn’t a lesson kids need to be learning. Some people hate it just out of finding Pinkie annoying, or dislike the focus on slapstick comedy over telling a story. Others love the episode because of its funny bits, the plethora of unique Pinkie animations, and the return of Derpy Hooves as a mainstay background character.
As for me, I’m pretty divided about it myself. My first time through the show, it was one of the two episodes which I’d found bothersome and confusing, the other being Over A Barrel. I was intrigued to discover that both of these episodes were written by Dave Polsky, who didn’t get another episode until season three, wherein he wrote the phenomenal Too Many Pinkie Pies.
The second time I watched Feeling Pinkie Keen was in the Hearts and Hooves Day marathon, and I enjoyed it a lot more when I wasn’t focused on the questionable moral message, and was more noticing the classic cartoon moments and sometimes excellent dialog. Feeling Pinkie Keen and Over A Barrel have two of my favorite dialog exchanges in the entire show, which I’ve characterized as being borderline stoner-comedy. The exchange in this episode is as follows:
(insert “can you explode twice” scene)
But as I watched the episode for the sake of this video, I found myself divided again. This time I noticed that on a technical level, Feeling Pinkie Keen is pretty weak. Even though it has a lot of unique poses for both Pinkie Pie and Twilight, some of which are great, a lot of them look shoddy or awkward in a way that would never come out of this show in later seasons. Tara Strong also turns in a surprisingly uneven performance in this episode. I love certain lines, [probably because it smells good], but other parts sound like she didn’t know where the dialog was supposed to be going, which I can’t blame her for, because neither do I.
So let’s get down to it. Why in the world does this episode feel so awkward?
As I mentioned earlier, Twilight’s skepticism, which almost immediately manifests as rage, doesn’t make much sense. If she’s so in love with science and learning, why does facing something outside of her experience leave her so annoyed and infuriated, more so than curious? Twilight is so frustrated by this phenomenon that she gives up on studying it, basically without trying. Her aggravation overcomes her scientific curiosity to the point that she just accepts Pinkie’s ability as existent and stops questioning it.
This is what makes the episode’s lesson feel so wrong. In a moment, I’ll get into why I think it’s fine to accept that some things are unexplainable, but the idea that you should give up on explaining something if you can’t figure it out in an afternoon is ludicrous. Not just from a scientific perspective, but from the perspective of anything in life that needs to be learned. If you can’t figure out how to play guitar in a day, should you just give up? If you can’t figure out a mathematical principle in a day, should you just give up? No and no, and this is the opposite of what we ordinarily try to teach people.
That may or may not be what the episode is trying to say, but the bottom line is that that’s how it comes across. It would be one thing to have a lesson about pursuing something that you don’t ultimately care about or doesn’t bring you happiness. A lesson about not letting the things you don’t understand get to you would’ve been a fine way to go here. And really, we can read the message that way if we chose to, but that’s not what it sounds like. It sounds like it’s saying, “there are some things you’ll never understand, so you should just give up,” which is not a good message.
Now, for the sake of clarification, I’m going to get a little philosophical here and talk about unexplainable things.
There are always going to be things which cannot be understood, because there must be things which are beyond the human ability to comprehend. The existence of “something” proves the existence of “nothing,” and “nothing” is a concept that we cannot grasp, because it stands to reason that “nothing” must be “something.”
It doesn’t make any sense that there is a point at which we reach the smallest base building block of all matter, because every step of the way, it has to be made up of something. There is simply a limit to how much of this something we can perceive. It also doesn’t make sense for existence to be finite, because there must be then a space outside of existence, AKA non-existence, which again is a concept that is impossible to understand.
And as long as this is true, we may as well assume that there is even more out there than non-existence and inconceivability which we don’t know about and can’t comprehend. It can be far off or nearby, but there must be absolutely incomprehensible things.
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t seek to understand all that we can, though. To me, it only means that we should never speak as though there is absolute truth to be discovered and decoded. Nothing can ultimately be discredited, because possibility is endless beyond our ability to say otherwise. And now I’m getting farther from the point.
Which is, that it’s not wrong to give up on explaining Pinkie Sense, and to simply trust in the evidence of its existence. Whether or not you want to study it and find its meaning depends on the depth of your will. If we read Twilight as giving up because she just doesn’t care that much, then it’s less terrible. But if we read it as a message that because there are things which can’t be understood, then we shouldn’t even try, then that would be horrible.
OKAY! With that long-winded thought out of the way, let’s talk about some smaller stuff.
Fluttershy is moving the frog population to Froggy Bottom Bog because she expects them to have more room to frolic. However, it turns out that the real reason the Bog is barren of Frogs is because the hydra has been eating all of them. Fluttershy seems to acknowledge this when she tells the frog how sorry she is. Brutal.
Fluttershy makes a nod to Dragonshy with her hop skip and jump line. The only reason I can think of for Twilight not using her teleport is that Polsky somehow hadn’t seen her use it before.
And, that’s about all I’ve got to say about Feeling Pinkie Keen for now. I’m not sure even what I’ve just said, but hopefully it was helpful to you. I’ll look forward to the better and slightly less confusing Over A Barrel, which I may as well cover in the time while we wait for Polsky’s next episode, which is coming out two weeks late for some reason.
Also, while you’re here, why not go check out my new channel where I do thorough analysis of video games? I’ve got a video about Muramasa: The Demon Blade which pretty much no one’s watching yet, so go show that some love if you don’t mind.
My Sword Is Unbelievably Dull 
Disclaimer: LONG POST!
First off, I never thought they make Twilight so moe, with her getting curbstomped by everything.
Consider this article, if you haven’t encountered it already: http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v6_1/wood/. Wood approaches it from an academic (“too” academic—though this, in truth, is peer-reviewed material for a journal). But I can agree, if it’s worth saying, that art’s creation and reading is possibly much as he says—intuitive.
Also, this discussion (I find Canterlot superior to MLPForums/deviantART when it comes to useful information/targeted discussion): http://www.canterlot.com/topic/528-feeling-pinky-keen-the-debate/page__st__20.
Beyond the story, everything seemed sort of mediocre, even the specific plot—except “explode twice.” I could replay that scene for hours. A bit better than average.
My personal understanding of the story arises from the literary, rather than the explicitly empirical: the way this crap actually works in myth, particularly fiction. I’ll start with Greek literary tradition, then move to anime. In the tragedies, or in Homer, the conflict is not so much over inductive reasoning or science, but rather the man’s intuition of “gods” and of what they want. An easy way of thinking about this is diagramming the “sides” in the Trojan War, with their various interests. Trojans, led by Paris and his noble-champion brother Hector, and their noble father Priam. Then there’s the Greeks: Helen, who ditched Menelaus for Paris, Agamemnon his brother, Achilles the wild card, Ajax the buff guy, Odysseus the thinker, and so on. Then there are the gods who fuck each other up in order to change the outcome to their liking.
Of course, no side—or person—is fully in control. Even the gods give in to each other. There’s only really one moment in Iliad where there’s “real” alignment between gods and men: pissed off, and filled/possessed with the vengeful fire of Zeus, Achilles goes batshit and starts wailing on his enemies.
Antigone’s a similar example, though from a noticeably different angle; King Creon forbids the burial of one of his nephews, whom he views as a traitor. But his niece decides that she’ll break the rules and bury her brother. At some point, the king agonizes over his lack of knowledge: should he give way to her determination, or punish her with the harshness he vowed to mete out? In the end, he acts, but too late—horrible tragedy befalls the entire family. The Chorus at the end says (I paraphrase), “There are at least a couple of ways toward wisdom: humble listening, and suffering.” And in your gut, you say, awed, “Damn! Horrific as the results are, just maybe you’ve *gotten* something out of this!”
You’re probably starting to see that mortality and shortsightedness is central to this way of thinking. We don’t always have enough power or opportunity to do what we want (a sensible claim), but we inevitably shoot for something or other. Life is action, and the vast majority of action is resisted. And maybe it’s okay to claim that we can do whatever we want, if that gives us and others courage.
Right now, Gurren Lagann’s the sharpest example I can think of in anime. Kamina’s defined by his lack of hesitation: he’s ever-ready to leap, and to leap massively. The problems are obvious: it’s perhaps impossible to narrow down where and when “gods” will speak. Whenever he leaps and falls, it’s Simon who catches him. But his greatest moment is in that final fight: almost-dead, or actually fucking dead, he says, “No—I *will not* leave my brothers behind in their despair.” And for a second, HOLY SHIT—it’s like the rules are bent just for him. It’s as if a barely-audible voice, carried by the wind, is whispering graspable opportunity for a big play. For once (arguably plenty of times), his will is actually aligned with whatever the hell “is actually out there,” possibly bypassing known rules of science, physics, Spiral Power, and all of that shit; after all, it’s an irresponsible claim to say that we MAKE the shit happen. For all of Simon’s preachiness and dogma, all his talk about not giving a damn about rules, even he doesn’t get that far, and I think he actually understands that. But he becomes okay with who he is. And, honestly, Simon’s inner battle gives hope to others that what Kamina believed—and miraculously “proved”—is reachable. With Kamina’s life, there was a “splinter in their minds,” so to speak. No excuse. But Simon’s case explores the why of it all.
What does this nerdy nonsense have to do with the ep? True, the role of “gods” here is only peripheral: in this case, you could call it fate, or cosmos, or universe, or the incomprehensible outside. But since we don’t know what it is, or how much of it IS knowable, is manipulable, we can only call it “facts we don’t have yet,” or a something along those lines. My point is that this particular narrative is one answer of many (though a very familiar one) to the question of how one reconciles theory (not law, as the linked discussion points out) and personal agency. Does one (especially a social or moral force or “power”) dictate the other? Do you obsess over theories? Do you just let the things you don’t understand go? There are a lot of ways authors have approached the question.
Actually, I’m one to contest the notion that Twilight’s out-of-character, because there’s arguable continuity here. In “Bridle Gossip,” for example, her issue is curses and prejudice; if the events of “Pinkie Keen” takes place afterward, her exchange with Pinkie forms an interesting addition. Twilight’s considers magic an inborn skill that can *produce* effects. Moreover, she’s always had a bias issue (particularly toward magic, which appears to be testable *and* universal), which has sometimes been a “help.” Bias (if you wanted to be mean about it, “bigotry”) has always been central to Equestrian thinking, sometimes less-than-subtly. Neither is she all that great an inductive scientist. She slips into abductive reasoning in her day-to-day life, same as the average person does. Consider “MMMystery,” which is said to be her biggest science moment. The ep is rife with abductive reasoning that subtly reveals her personality—though a viewer may or may not have to read the text more carefully to see it. Hint: “Doesn’t make any sense.”
The thing is, if there’s a source she’s come to recognize, Twilight can accept the ensuing claims, prophetic or whatever; if evidence seems contrary to her conclusions, she’s thrown into a bit of a mental huff. She inherently has trouble with comprehending a living being itself as the intermediary tool for research; compare and contrast studying a magical artifact and studying a live person (and a wacky one at that). As such, I’m *really* hesitant to conclude that Twilight should have given way in this episode so easily as people suggest, with her immediately admitting “something credible” to what was going on with Pinkie. Honestly, one can see how the discomfort arises. Okay: so we know that Twilight IS stubborn. We know that to her, Pinkie’s claims are debunkable hunches, and it’s clear why she’d see things that way—the actions they predict are absurdly broad, and interspersed with non-Pinkie-Sense moments. This much is a reasonable set-up in the story. And as far as she knows, these things *only* happen to Pinkie—and only aligned with her point of view (we’re to think that Gummy’s not dangerous, but the shock of seeing him might have theoretically caused a heart attack; would we then say that he wasn’t the cause?) What does one do with that? What makes Pinkie so damned special? Twilight is fixated with discovery of the source, the phenomenon of Pinkie’s physical state when it occurs (using biometrics). The problem is that she gets nothing out of it (honestly, the worst thing here is that they didn’t have that scene continue in medias res, because it seems unrealistically short). Then her goal twists into that of invalidating Pinkie as an intermediary tool. It’s kind of a stretch for viewers to jump in, saying, “Well, if I were a scientist, this is what I’D do.” Twilight is trying to do shit to a person, and she isn’t sure how to do that. Of course logical holes in her approach should be understandable. I really get Twilight’s frustration, here.
This, I should note, is a danger similar to the one that people on both sides fell into when considering the strength of “Boast Busters.” You’re not to immediately assume the connotations of magic shows here in our world to align with the situation in theirs, nor are you to assume that what’s obvious to us is obvious to the characters (the second thing is actually lazy thinking we fall into doing). What we *can* more reliably use is psychology and emotion, which works with stimuli. The real problem of that particularly episode, as I’ve told you, is that the responses are unwarranted: the stimuli are either absent or very poorly communicated.
“Giving up on the scientific method” might be a distracted and misleading argument. We’re finite beings: giving up is, from one point of view, a necessary part of life. It seems to me that Twilight’s focus in this episode is on the analysis and “scientizing” of intuition itself. Inductive reasoning requires way too much energy in this case study, yet I’m not sure people properly understand that. Heights, various objects…really think about it. Twilight realizes that watching Pinkie in action (subjective as her wacky viewpoint is)—not holing her up—is the way to go. If one reads closely, the issue isn’t so much Pinkie’s “ability,” because we’re meant to see her (“immorally” and uncomfortably) as a “living artifact,” rather than as an ability-based person, as some (wrongly) seem to view her. This is the frame of mind Twilight’s working with, isn’t it? Isn’t this what the story is thematically and overtly suggesting all over the place? It’s kind of cute, actually: she’s growing toward the point of seeing Pinkie as a friend, and away from treating her like a thing or even a person with a weird ability.
This is where my myth allusion comes full circle. If we are ever “used”—like wands, artifacts, horns, etc.—by entities or forces we don’t comprehend, what do we even do? The suggestion seems to be, “working to use your resources better” and “not wasting time to the point of paralysis.” Mythic heroes around the world trusted what divine things they were told and given. Kamina chanced things; Simon obsessed until he convinced himself through convoluted dogma that he was right. Without a “divinely-given” hunch whispering “when to leap,” Twilight also uses her time a little bit better. She knows her biases and weaknesses, and like an honest person tries to shed them. Prior to this point in the story, Twilight is *not* being productive, we must emphasize. Rather than wasting time on pursuing scientific law—which she doesn’t exactly want to do in the first place, because she really wants to *validate* the “object”—she trusts her friend. That gives her the peace of mind to work effectively, as we assume she later does.
Honestly I don’t know how to reply to your comment, as it is giant and for a while I didn’t know what you were getting at. Your conclusion, however, seems to be interpreting what I mentioned in the video as a possibility—that a message about not wasting your time with something you don’t ultimately care about is a good message. It’s like you took my “you can read it like that if you want to” line and ran with it, hehe.
D’oh! I worried about that. Let me try again.
Understanding Twilight’s erroneous point of view is vital. The conflict of the story—and the issue for discussion—was never “figuring out” Pinkie Sense, but accepting it as an extant body of knowledge. The comedy is in that she keeps rejecting it; there’s an intended tension between the “obviousness” of the “what’s happening” and Twilight’s not-all-bad stubbornness. The scientific process is tailored toward proving that this body exists. Her goal isn’t to understand the circumstances under which it works (dangerous situations, underwater, while asleep), but (1) to discover a “possible” CAUSE, since she’s biased, and later (2) to discredit Pinkie as a valid subject. The second thing is obviously twisted, and we’re meant to know this.
I think Twilight’s acting in-character: she’s always been one to lose it over things that seem like old wives’ tales, which her friends repeatedly seem to buy into, even after being disproven. Other earlier episodes (and a few later ones) suggest that she’s always been biased toward magic, even magical prophecies or whatever—if they come from a credible source. I don’t think the text even suggests that she is a great scientist, or science whiz; her skill isn’t being all scientifically sound (though she is a mystery geek), but better experience with assessing clues she does get. Really, she’s an inside-the-box thinker. In “MMMystery,” for example, she doesn’t make assumptions; neither does she solve the case—everyone admits the crime proactively out of guilt.
Now, Pinkie: I think the text makes clear that you’re not supposed to see her reactions as “testable,” even though as physical phenomena they obviously are: they’re all over the place. We’re talking about two slightly-different combos meaning entirely different things. Things being dropped, and things falling on their own from totally different heights. But when Pinkie tosses her hat (which Twilight doesn’t see), no twitching. There’s a rationalization for *everything* that doesn’t align with Twilight’s reasoning: Pinkie doesn’t consider Gummy as scary, for example. She even knows that the “doozy” will happen at the Bog! My more important point is that Twilight’s continually falling down and having crap happen to her. We know that she would be annoyed in the first place, as a character. We know that she obsesses over things, and we see that she’s probably really embarrassed—it’s understandable that she’d be fixated with proving her own theory right; an approach we know to be wrong.
Twilight’s changing approach isn’t absurd, though its effectiveness is *very* questionable. She decides to watch Pinkie from a distance, rather than keeping her holed up, because she decides that the range of variables for testing in a controlled environment is too broad for useful induction; the scene implies this, no? She’s the one who *makes* that call. “If it all happens as she goes about her daily business, then I’ll observe her outside,” is her inner reasoning. Here’s the mistake I worry people are making with respect to the episode; what she’s really chasing in her analysis of Pinkie is actually definitive *impression* of a cause, which is philosophically unreachable, anyway. Hume (and many others since him) have pointed out that we can have no impression of “causal power.” Essentially, we see two events that follow each other enough times to convince us. The more meticulous the testing, and the more consistent the relation, the more we’re likely to believe. It’s all about thresholds, here. In Pinkie’s case, the links between the weird events are not obvious (except that they all “happen,” somehow or another), but the bigger point is that they aren’t obvious *to her.*
This is precisely why it’s disingenuous to claim, “Yeah, but she could have still chased more knowledge.” It’s off the mark. She wouldn’t have, and it seems pretty clear why. Her conclusions wouldn’t satisfy her, because she’s concretely biased in the first place and is seeking satisfaction of that bias. We reject it because of our universal (and not all-bad) tendency to read anachronistic or out-of-setting material in. As uncomfortable as we may feel about it, it’s actually believable that Twilight would do what she did. Twilight’s approach was half-assed and biased, and clearly so, but it’s interesting that (for all our criticism) we likely don’t have much to go on, either.
Even now I get and don’t get what you mean by “not caring enough.” I know what you’re saying, but I think the situation’s a little more nuanced than that. She does care about her way of thinking, a hell of a lot. That’s why her admission IS a doozy; that’s why the tension is actually significant. She IS invested, and she feels that she HAS experienced a lot of affirmative evidence, no technical contradictions, and that impression of the why has slipped through her fingers every time. It isn’t as if she’s tossing her cares away, but that her threshold has been met. Twilight’s always been the “obsessor-for-a-day.” The issue isn’t merely unexplainable knowledge, but what one will do with the realization of it. She accepts the body of knowledge, having tested it (questionably), but most importantly choosing to work with it—sort of as a tentative asset or addition.
Do we honestly want this to turn into a paranormal episode? That would be a huge can of worms.
Greek myth (also Mesopotamian myth) plays with these same themes: central to life is action. Even resisting brainwashing, or inevitable death, or fate is important. Do what you will, and face “unforeseeable” and “foreseeable” consequences as responsibly as you can. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, other bodies of knowledge or power (“gods” in this context) will give you a cheat code. Both heroes of Gurren Lagann are badasses, but Kamina doesn’t really think twice about his bravado; the act always had a measured and necessary goal (iffy as we can argue it to be). The story suggests (whether right or wrong for preaching it) that he accesses the “highest possible” cheat code, because he leaps without winding rationalizing. He did it without Simon’s neediness and wandering. It’s pretty much agreed (by both fans and the creators, too, I think) that he never taps into Spiral Power, but rather into the depth of human will.
Okay I think I get it now, and it’s a fascinating point. I can agree that Twilight may really be in-character here, and I might not have done a good enough job of finding that. I tend to take the route of saying “the creator didn’t think it through”—which is still very likely—but it would’ve been better if I’d rationalized it (since that’s basically the whole thing I do with my Pinkie ep readings). In this episode, I was too ready to explore my discomfort, instead of finding a reading that I would be comfortable with, as you’ve found. A lot of my commenters love to come from the rationalization direction, as you can see in the youtube discussion about Twilight’s teleportation, which I all but turned down.
If I redo this analysis, I’ll probably strike a balance, by sharing what about the episode misdirects me (the fact that Twilight is coming at this scientifically tricks me into seeing her as scientific, instead of considering her outside of this one episode) and then going into a more detailed rationalization. I also think I should probably watch all of the show in-between analyzing it, so that I don’t keep getting too focused on the episodes as islands, instead of parts of the bigger whole.
Hmm, yeah. I’m with you here; I think it was sort of messy, but at least it’s there, with the lucid order that “Boast Busters” lacked. Basically, one can think of Pinkie Pie as a dowsing fork or rod: Twilight just wants to find an alternative phenomenon to discredit Pinkie’s supposed power, more precisely something that reduces her experiences to the coincidental—or, barring that, the incidental. But the line between coincidence and knowledge is inherently hazy, which is something many don’t like to hear. It necessarily requires articulated parameters, leaps, and resolve. At the end of the day, we’re the ones still giving in to evidence, collections of data. Not because it isn’t worth pursuing anymore, but because living isn’t all about rigorous and systematic evaluation in the first place.
I thought your post was fine, actually: you pointed out that it is awkward at the deeper level, which it is. I agree that it’s mediocre. That moral could have been communicated better, and there were a lot of corny, obvious lines. But I cannot repeat enough that the Reports are made by characters within conversations and contexts. It would be insincere if all of a sudden they said things they hadn’t worked toward. You can’t force that in. Rarely are the Reports fucked up. Now, if only adults could remember this, I think they’d flip shit a lot less often. And Faust thought the message got in fine, before people shouted that it didn’t work. Then she said that she would have been more precise—about the message, rather than the ep (though would you really admit that you wrote badly?).
About teleportation: she first did it in the second ep, then again in “Ticket Master.” She can teleport herself easily enough, but doing it to another person is harder. And, honestly, the trope is easy enough: the argument is often that you have to have had the impression of it once before (smell, sight, touch, etc.), and concentration. But if the “image” is too blurry, or you’re too rushed, you could fuck up bad. Is that reading too much in? Maybe, but I’m not sure. She gets very clearly better over time.
About science: well, scientism is crazy. Not definitively impossible or bad, because how would we prove it? But I will say that phrenology and the SATs were scientistic endeavors. I think that’s part of the weirdness: you can “use” science to achieve things other than just…bland, “unbiased truth” or whatever. Twilight’s aim seemed noble to her, but it was misguided; she chased something actually impossible, and the “data” (it is data, the fair viewer knows) she wasn’t all that concerned about wasn’t in the language that she wanted.
And islands? Well, continuity isn’t a huge thing, I guess—but there are character patterns for conversation. I consider an episodic series to be a complete work, but each episode is like an arc, a small act. And they all respond to each other in tiny ways. The reason many don’t want to understand this is because we have a bias toward “complete” work. Conveniently, we forget that serial fiction is how the game used to be played. The greatest works of literature were serial. It’s more interesting actually, because it sits a bit more than it would if you just wrote a novel on your own and just published it.
If something seems out-of-character, just try to think of similar situations and rewatch those scenes. If you need to, rewatch the ep—but usually the scene jogs your memory.
Holy fuck, nice beard.
You’re starting to look like Varg vikernes for fuck’s sake.
Just saying that makes me ooze jelly.
Holy hell, I hadn’t known Varg had a beard. But it does totally look like a blonde version of mine.
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Honestly, I watched your video on youtube of this episode and I couldn’t help but think of the message that you try to point out. Originally, I had loved this episode due to the fact that it was cute, funny, and over all light hearted in contrast to some of the deep topics that MLP takes on. It is a little confusing because of the concept of what does it mean. Now I did see you point out the theme of “giving up when you can’t understand” and “Accepting something just because it is” but I think there is something that you might have overlooked in the analysis. Now take a deep breath and be patient with me, but have you thought of how religion might play an underlying role in this? No, I’m not saying that you should just accept the ideals of a religion simple due to the fact that so many people believe it. But it teaches the concept of religious tolerance. Pinkie just so happens to be able to tell the occurrences and all the other ponies in Ponyville go with it, representing the followers of said religion. Twilight on the other hand takes this abstract sense that Pinkie has and thinks it is bogus. She completely analyzes this to the nitty gritty and seeks to find its meaning or explanation. Twilight being a non-believer. Be it follower of a different religion or flat out atheist. But by the end of the episode Twilight is accepting of her out-of-the-box ways and goes as far as to join in with her. The Pinkie sense doesn’t even come up in any more episodes after this one either. It could be entirely possible that the main pitch of Feeling Pinkie Keen is not to tell kids to give up if you can’t figure it out, but to simply be accept the fact that some people see the world different from how you do. They even show this theory of tolerance and acceptance in the episode Bridle Gossip where Zecora is introduced.
If you even bothered to read this far then thanks man, you are a trooper. I hope this helps you understand the meaning a bit better. And if it doesn’t then that’s chill too. If it wasn’t for your analysis I likely would not have come to this conclusion. So again, thanks bro.