Pony Venting Thread

@Megalobronia
I’d say yes. You can have more criticism than praise for the way things went in canon, but still love a show because of its potential. You can be unhappy with what is but happy with what could have been. Which is incidentally what fanfics and fanarts tend to revolve around…

Obviously, there’s also people who have a much more toxic ‘love/hate’ relationship with it, and people who straight out only have hate left, but you can have lots of complaints about something and still love it.

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Anyway, since this is the venting thread… Is it me or do victims have no rights whatsoever in G4?

There’s often emphasis on the act that wronged them or put them in danger, but the victims themselves are lucky when they’re treated like an afterthought. Usually they’re swept under the rug. Even though they’re kinda the main reason the acts are considered wrong or the villains are called evil to begin with.

The Grand Galloping Gala guests get their night ruined and it’s treated like a good thing. Discord hurt the Mane Six so badly Lesson Zero might be PTSD, but Celestia tells them to suck it up and try to reform him. Starlight’s ex-cult members are written into missing their abuser instead of hating her. Twilight tells the HuMane Five to befriend Sunset like those three years of bullying didn’t exist. CHS’ students do hate Sunset for what she’s done but she’s also been rewritten into a can-do-no-wrong angel woobie, so they look like the wrong party.

Twilight feels so, so sad about Tempest’s broken horn while not giving a damn about the ponies she personally helped enslave. Ponies who ended up under yards of snow because of Rainbow’s tortoise tantrum aren’t even worth mentioning. And probably more… I’d expect the crystal ponies to be told to suck it up and forgive Sombra or else if the show had ‘redeemed’ him too.

It even extends beyond the show itself. We’ve all seen the arguments against and in favor of the Terrible Trio, Discord and all. Well, I’ve never seen the villain defenders even pretend said villains’ victims even existed, and I can’t say I’ve seen lots of their condemners mention the people who’re the reason they can be called evil in the first place either.

It’s been long enough that it’s more eyerolling than infuriating to me now, but that’s one of the reasons I never was impressed with the Equestrian ‘utopia.’ Or why I care more about what can be than what is, to go back to the start of my post.

@Roseluck
Here among bronies, it’s all weakly wrought rhetoric & who deserves the coveted Crown of Best Pony/Creature to us.

I think the scariest thing about that kind of talk and thinking about it is that if I really sit down and think about it, MLP, in brutal honesty, is a pretty bad show. There are so many problems to point out it’s honestly depressing.

And no, it doesn’t matter if I think about potentials. Potentials never happened. What we see is what we get. It’s like a bad movie. It doesn’t matter with director cuts, ultimate cuts, or “patches” that fix the films. What we see is what we get and if we have to dig into other media to see the good parts, it’s like an excuse. Fanworks are the same. I mean ifthe medium needs the audience, people that pay to watch said medium, to fix itself, what does it really say about it?

Is My Little Pony bad?

Too bad some people don’t want to accept that

@Just Wayne
MLP is not a bad show. I think sone people are just overthinking too much about it

@Just Wayne
Short response: No

@Just Wayne
It’s better than some things and worse than others. What that makes it is for you to decide.

@Roseluck
Two points I want to make.

The first is that I think you’re right. Discord is the worst offender. If not for plot armor, he would have been responsible for destroying Equestria at least twice since his release. I’m wondering if Opaline is going to be a deconstruction of this idea. Like what if Sunny’s optimism is challenged by Twilight saying
“Some creatures you can’t fix, and there’s a point where trying is more selfish than helpful”. I think we’re at a point where villains being unsympathetic and having no redeeming qualities is the more subversive option.

Having said that…

I’m biased, but I think out of all the characters, Tempest is the one who deserves redemption the most. She has tons of positive qualities: she’s polite, professional, respectful, she’s a leader, she gets results, she’s worked hard to overcome her handicap and improve herself. Those traits just manifest themselves in destructive ways; she’s an anti-villain.

@Just Wayne
I’m confident that Season One is good, just not for the reasons we hyped it up for. It isn’t this lore-rich fantasy epic, but it’s a pretty solid character study.

The show as a whole suffers from a lack of long-term planning, and is not greater than the sum of its parts.

Well to be fair, who expected the show to last as long as it did?

@Just Wayne
Sorry, I didn’t mean to make anyone feel bad with my post.

I wasn’t talking about the show’s quality when I mentioned potential though. Just how each individual fan might love (and hate) different things, and that they could be happy with fanon or their own imagination even when canon made them unhappy.

As a whole I’ve been trying to chase happiness since I changed my name to Roseluck. Results may vary.

@DerpyFast
Thanks for the good conversation, as always.

I actually wasn’t talking about the villains themselves. My point wasn’t that Twilight forgave Tempest, but that she didn’t care about her victims. I’d be annoyed even without her caring about their abuser instead.

In a sense, my question isn’t “did the villains get what they deserve?” but “why does no one ever care about their victims?”

@Mr.Myoozik
Agree

@DerpyFast
I disagree, I do think it is greater than the sum of its parts

With all I said, that’s why I don’t get it whenever someone talks about “the glory days of G4” when talking about G5. If it was such “glory days”, why do some people want parts of it to be non-canon? The majority of it in fact. People just like to ignore G4’s flaws because “new bad” when many others criticize the shit out of G4. Either admit both generations are good or remember both have flaws. It’s annoying seeing hypocrisies in this fandom.

If G4 was so great then why did it only have 9 seasons?

@Dustcan
Because the fans did the most.

About the if they really think about it MLP is a pretty bad show. I wouldn’t say MLP is bad but it is what is known as (mid) writing wise, although it does have some high points. But it’s a good mid, sometimes things that may not be ‘objectively’ the best writing can be entertaining. For example, even what is considered the the peak of total drama, total drama island, isn’t peak writing but it’s good writing with enjoyable characters.

I was just looking for some images of a pony and not too far scrolling down I already see something inappropriate.

Google needs to fix this, what if a child sees this :|

I’d say G4 is a pretty good show, IF you don’t (definitely over)think about morality.

Which I wanna say, you shouldn’t even have to worry about it in a kids show with pastel horses, but G4 spent so much time trying to teach people right from wrong that it should actually have been good about it. It’s the same situation with The Dragon Prince, though G4 isn’t quite the same level of the writers preaching about their One True Way.

Like, you keep claiming your heroes are paragons of all things good, you better put your money where your mouth is instead of operating on protagonist-centered morality, “villains are the real victims!” and “the real magic is connections~” all the damn time.

Nostalgia goggles on, or even just bad memory, but Kim Possible and Teen Titans didn’t come off as telling people The Right Way To Think, and so didn’t need to not fail about that… and turns out I didn’t have issues with them like I do with G4. The Last Airbender also didn’t feel preachy or full of itself, even though the heroes were dealing with genocidal imperialists who were on a white man’s burden trip.

@Just Wayne
Don’t those glory days or golden age refer to the fandom, it huge community and its metric ton of content rather than to Friendship is Magic, though? It kinda eclipsed the show itself.

@Roseluck
My mistake.

I think a big part of it has to do with tone. The early show had a more cartoonish tone, and events didn’t carry much weight. In “Swarm of the Century”, the entire town is destroyed and it’s mostly played for laughs. In “Feeling Pinkie Keen”, Twilight is crushed by a bunch of falling objects, and is fine in the next scene. In “Dragonshy”, Rainbow pulls a Leroy Jenkins, and doesn’t face any consequences for it. But there’s also the opposite end of the spectrum: “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep”, which is all about Luna’s guilt; she’s constantly apologizing for dragging others into her mess (and Goddamn, I’d forgotten just how good that episode was).

The other thing was that the setting just wasn’t very robust. Most of the characters didn’t have lives that were defined enough to impact. The villains couldn’t really do anything with lasting consequences; Equestria was just too inert to really hurt (at least, not without breaking the show). Plus, most of the time everything just went back to normal after the threat was dealt with. So because of the tone and the way the show was structured, we weren’t given anything concrete to care about when it came to the victims.

Which brings me to Tempest. I’ll point out that Twilight broke down crying when she thought she’d blown her chance to save Equestria. Then she was captured by Tempest, and said something that got under Tempest’s skin. Tempest’s story caused her to realize that she’d become exactly like the ponies who abandoned Tempest.

Just as a side note, it’s kind of interesting that by the time The Movie rolled around, Twilight had watched Equestria go back to normal like nothing happened a whopping eight times. But Tempest is one of the few characters Twilight has encountered whose life had been permanently changed by a traumatic event. Tempest is a villain, but she’s also a victim.

As far as “concern for the victim”, I think G5 is knocking it out of the park with Misty. Because my God do I ever want to see Misty rescued from her situation.

@Just Wayne
Given that I was in the fandom during the initial explosion and had overhyped the show, I feel the need to be a little harder on G4 to balance things out. Whenever I have an opinion on G5, I try to preface it with how I feel about G4. For example, I think two out of every thirteen episodes of G4 fell into the “legitimately great” tier.

@Megalobronia
Is it fair to criticize the early staff for a lack of long-term planning when nobody expected it to last as long as it did? Probably not.

But the show still suffered for it. It is what it is.

@Roseluck
Doesn’t G5 have it too? That does not count? But no, the images and comments that talk shit about G5 definitely target at the source material, so including the fandom or experiences with the fandom doesn’t count. It’s not fair. It doesn’t make sense.

Also, it’s kind of funny we’d rather praise ourselves so much more than the very source materials that garnered an entire community. Not trying to look down on fanworks but damn, do we really think this lowly of the medium we supposedly “love” so much? That goes for both generations, not just G4.

This hits back to the post I did back in Upopular Opinion Thread. I think it still holds true. The amount of criticism toward the entirety of MLP is so large. It’s hard to believe how we fell in love with it so much in the first place. Maybe it hasn’t been bad initially, but it definitely has goen downhill the longer it went. Sadly the only thing our shows have going for themselves, is porn.

@Just Wayne
People can think both generations have strengths and flaws but one has more of either.

@Roseluck
I get your point… but I do also think that trying to teach kids things and mostly succeeding is better than not trying at all.

@Just Wayne
G5’s brony fandom is certainly at a lower ebb than early G4’s. And the fandom has lost a lot of it’s shine.

Forgive me for acting like a contrarian, but you can like both without worrying which one is better and whatnot, both are just simple cartoons at the end of the day who entertain their target audience and even the periphery demographic. Compared to other cartoons that failed to appeal to both, I’d say that G4 suffering from seasonal rot or G5 having inconsistency problems is really nothing to sneeze at.

Hope I’m not jinxing it, but I’m relieved that so far, G5 doesn’t have any assholes with more ego than talent in the fandom who say shit like, “I could write this crap better than these hacks!” Sure, G4 S1 purist. Suuuuuuuuuuuuure.

@Vivace
That’s probably already happened

@northern haste
In G4, but no sightings for G5, and I’d rather not have that streak broken.