- Story by Ted Anderson, Art by Brenda Hickey
Twilight Sparkle is struggling to resolve the ever-increasing pile of friendship problem requests she is getting, stressing out and losing sleep. From Spike, she gets the idea to talk to other ponies to see how they handle the stress, and quickly realizing Applejack is a calm but hard worker. However, AJ is about to take off for a week to deliver apples to Canterlot, but suggests that Twilight talk to Big Mac, who is also as cool and collected.
Twilight attempts to spy on Big Mac to understand how the stallion keeps his cool, but doesn't learn anything. She tries to interview him, but his terse vocabulary frustrates her further. She returns home and discovers a spell that lets a pony enter the mind of another pony, which she figures will let her determine the inner workings of Big Mac's mind. Giving Big Mac only the briefest warning, she casts the spell and enters his mind.
Inside, she finds Big Mac's mind is pictured as a rather ordered farm that allows his ideas to literally grow in an orderly fashion, explaining how calm and collected he is. There are also alternate versions of himself that respect different facets of his personality, such as a helpful one or a talkative one. The more curious Big Mac is intrigued by Twilight's own stress and pulls them all into her mind within the mind spell. They find themselves in Twilight's mind, a library but without any sort of rhyme or reason to the sorting of the books. The Big Mac ego-facets suggest that Twilight needs to take time off from her problems and try to stop multitasking, as it is creating her stress. Twilight reasons they are right, but as she comes to that conclusion, a giant gelatinous form of Twilight's stress starts to flood the library. Twilight quickly ends her spell, returning her to the real world. She takes a moment to collect herself and then offers to help Big Mac on his chores to take her mind off her problems. With the farm work done, she is able to go back and come up with an innovative approach to her friendship problem piles and with a fresh mind gets back to work.
This issue provides examples of:
- Big Brother Instinct: We see the manifestation of Big Mac's 'Overprotective' side, which apparently goes about threatening anyone who looks at his sister.
- Continuity Nod: Smarty Pants is sitting in a tree in Big Mac's mind.
- Character Tic: Twilight chewing on the end of her mane when nervous.
- Expy: The talkative part of Big Mac's personality is one of Navi from "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time". So there's no doubt this was intentional...
- Incoming Ham: After Twilight learns her spell, she zips off and lands with a loud "SWOSH!" right next to Big Mac, surprising him.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: Twilight has a spell that lets her enter the subconscious minds of other ponies. Later, one of the Big Mac's is able to take them all into Twilight's mind for a dream-within-a-dream sequence.
- Literal Split Personality: The various facets of Big Mac's personality that reside within his mind.
