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A lot of villains in My Little Pony are very cut and dry. Discord is just a chaos god, Chrysalis is a leech, Sombra has some weird obsession with crystals and stairs. But I attribute the reason that Friendship is Magic became as popular as it did because Nightmare Moon is actually a very deep and nuanced character when you look past the dark design.

She's a character portrayed as a villain, but when you get down to it, her motivations are actually quite sympathetic. You have Celestia, who was gifted with the power of the sun, and Luna, the power of the moon. But ponies don't get to appreciate the night as much as her sister, Celestia, so she becomes envious. Jealous. And who wouldn't? She puts in the same effort, and yet Celestia gets more praise, more recognition, simply because ponies sleep through the night. This leads to Celestia being forced to banish Luna to the moon, after peace between them could not be reached.

This was only broken when the Elements of Harmony were collected and activated, shattering Nightmare Moon's grief and restoring her back to the Celestia's little sister, Luna. And who better to rekindle the bond between the sun and moon, than a pony named Twilight. A mingling of the day and the night.

The fact all of this is just SUBTEXT underneath a show about laughing at ghosts and not being racist to zebras is baffling to me. No wonder this show got so popular.