Siiiiigh. Sometimes, I hate kids. My niece was out last weekend, and I somehow caught a virus that kept me bedridden for four days. So this is really late in coming.
Also, if anyone has Blackstar: the Complete Series on DVD, or the live-action The Ghost Busters complete series DVD, and would be willing to sell it for $40 or less, PM me.
So anyway, been meaning to get back to The Coop and I figured its better late than never.
The Coop wrote:This is your take on the episode's moral lesson, yet you do the exact thing you're slamming the show for in the part below where you describe the fanbase (basing an opinion of all, on a few). But, I'll leave that be and get to the episode...
Nitpicky defense here, but when I judge bronies I'm not just judging from the first three I happened to meet who turned out to be jerks. Spike IS.
Nowhere does Spike say he considers himself a pony.
Yes he does. Right before the credits, he tells the hatchling phoenix that he's going to "raise it as a pony." I'm pretty sure that means he self-identifies as a pony.
Nowhere does he or the episode judge all dragons to be horrible dicks. Instead, he comes to realize that he's happy with who he is, how he is, and the ponies he has as friends/family, thanks to what he went through on his little journey.
The thing is the reason he came to that realization was because... three dragons were jerks, and he basically had a "I don't want to be like THAT" reaction.
If he had met a wider variety of dragons with varying beliefs but still kept finding ways he didn't totally fit in or wasn't comfortable with their ways vs pony ways, that would really have made the moral "You don't have to let others dictate who you are, what you do, or who your friends are." Instead it comes off as if he permanently has negative associations thanks to just one bad experience. That would be like if I stopped watching anime because some anime fans are assholes.
Morals- Talk to someone when you're being picked on, and don't go from being bullied, to being the bully.
.... aaaaand then Babs proceeds to give the (mostly verbal) smackdown to Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, even though Applejack is right there and sees those two being brats.
So wait, why is it okay to "Be the bully" to those two but not to Babs? Oh, because the writers wouldn't come up with DT's own victim story for two more seasons.
As for the bully subject, there is no guaranteed cure for it. You tell, you get picked on or left alone. You fight back, they get their friends and get back at you, or you get left alone. You say nothing, you keep getting picked on, or they get bored and go away. You talk to them, they bully you more or leave you alone. No show would say that, since it would make a bad situation seem almost hopeless to kids. But frankly, any legal solution can result in ending the situation, or making it worse, depending on the one being the bully. You literally won't know until you try one of them. So was the show's simplistic take to one of those situations unrealistic? Perhaps, but the set up worked for what and why things were happening. Was it teaching bad morals? No, I don't believe so, since talking (not necessarily snitching) to someone about it can help emotionally by not leaving you feeling like you're in it alone.
Again though, that's not really how it was handled. The show presented its solution as if its a garaunteed thing with zero percent chance of failure. Which is one of the reasons MLP's morals are horrible--they always belittle the problem and basically say "see, its so easy!" Which understandibly would be offensive to anyone who really dealt with these issues. Even Jem and the Holograms and other eighties cartoons admitted routinely that things weren't always so clear-cut.
The CMC got their school paper popular by gossiping about people and invading privacy. In time, Rarity found out the CMC were responsible for all the gossiping, and the CMC tried to quit doing the gossip column after Rarity chastised Sweetie Belle. But Diamond Tiara tried to blackmail them by threatening to release embarrassing photos of the CMC, which left the CMC torn between quitting, and having those photos put out for all to see and laugh at.
I should point out that this very thing causes the CMC's solution to come off as less than sincere. So the CMC are willing to embarrass everyone else, but when they themselves are under the gun, they suddenly apologize. Hmmm...
Moral- No one likes a privacy-invading gossip, and own up to your mistakes when you make them.
No one likes privacy-invading gossip? Then how did the column become popular?
Its the same issue as with the CMC themselves--nopony realizes that they themselves contributed to the issue by being fine with the gossip until they themselves wound up on the column. Even Rarity actually liked the paper until she became a subject.
Then of course rather than take any responsibility, they make the CMC scapegoats. That's why this episode is horrible.
Discord is the mischievous spirit of disharmony (Celestia said it, nearly word for word),
This being the same Celestia who claimed that she tried to reason with Nightmare Moon but that NMM was too arrogant to listen, when we later learn NMM barely existed for two minutes before Celestia flew right for the Elements. This being the same Celestia who didn't notice that Cadence was acting strangely bitchy. This being the same Celestia whose answer to any major issue is to manipulate her student into solving it--in the first ever instance, by denying there even is a problem in the first place!
I'm not sure whether Celestia is deceptive or merely stupid, but the point is her word should never be taken as gospel.
If we go by what we, the viewer, actually SEE Discord do (BEFORE the main six are sicced on him) he appears to be doing very little, indeed he even has a little chat with them. Its not until they go on their mission to defeat him that he starts being truly malevolent.
Again by contrast, we see Tex Hex and his master being assholes long before Bravestarr ever shows up, we see Skeletor acting like an asshole without provocation before we're even introduced to He-Man, we see the Misfits cause all sorts of mayhem with basically no provocation from Jem and the Holograms. Heck, even back in the 1980s Pony, we saw Tirek's troops kidnapping ponies just out of nowhere... and the ponies' reaction makes it clear that this is not the first such attack. Ergo in all these cases, the heroes of the show are unambiguously justified in taking action against them.
Even then, they still maintain a level of respect and humanity. There's an episode of Bravestarr where Thirty-Thirty THINKS Bravestarr has been kidnapped and so starts tearing up the villains' lair. When Bravestarr learns what happened... he offers to help clean up. There's various episodes of He-Man where He-Man and Skeletor (or Teela and Evil-Lyn) actually discuss their roles and try to understand each other. Probably best of all is
Unico in the Island of Magic where Unico outright tells Lord Kuruku that he doesn't want to fight but will if he has to (in this case because he knows Kuruku has a sad history), and then when Unico is forced to lunge at him, and upon realizing he scored a critical hit... he actually apologizes.
The Mane Six, on the other hand? Pretty much, every single time a character is presented as a villain, it suddenly makes it okay for the Mane Six to do whatever they want to them. Trixie back in "Boast Busters" was such an example. I'd argue Discord is another. We never see the Mane Six attempt to talk to or reason with him. From the minute he appears they're clearly in "you're the bad guy and we must defeat you" mode, not even asking him why he's doing this (just accepting Celestia's word that its his nature) or trying to find any sort of common ground with him.... even though Discord himself makes it clear he sorta-likes Pinkie.
This actually is made worse in light of "Keep Calm and Flutter On" where we see the Mane Six, AGAIN, go right to asshole mode... except for Fluttershy who ends up being the one to redeem him, and all it took was being a little nice but letting him know there are limits to what she'll put up with. Couldn't have tried that a season ago, Mane Six? Couldn't have tried that years ago, Celestia?
(A little tangent, but that's also an example of a writing trend I don't like in this series.... the "everyone is an asshole except for the designated non-asshole" ploy. I found it especially jarring that Pinkie Pie, who LIKED Discord, suddenly was being bitchy to him for no discernable cause. It just exacerbates the problem as it gives you the impression that all these cute little ponies are actually a society of unlikable assholes that no reasonable person would want to associate with).
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you're right or wrong. I will say though, that I don't agree with you regarding what the show's teaching kids. I personally don't see how you could come away with such cynical and negative messages from MLP:FIM, but I'm sure you don't agree with what I wrote either. So, I'll just leave it at that.
Admittedly part of it is just my recognizing the culture of modern cartoons. This mean-spirited cynicism has been a thing since at least 1998, with cartoons like Powerpuff Girls, Billy and Mandy, and the afformentioned "worst cartoon ever" Kids Next Door all being champions of it. It doesn't even take much to see it... especially when you've seen cartoons that really _were_ positive and saw how their handling of the exact same situations was completely different.
The problem with MLP is that it expects us to just take its word, but as a reasoning adult (one who has read too much Agatha Christie, and has been through some shitty situations in my life) I'm hard-wired to take into account EVERYTHING the episode decides to show me. An episode shows me adult ponies enjoying a school newspaper's gossip column, then those exact same adults abusing children for writing said column. Sorry but there's no way I'm gonna look at that and see the adults as in the right on this one. This isn't overthinking it--this is just being perceptive, and having a basis for comparison.
It would, perhaps, be enjoyable if this were a series like Ranma 1/2 where the hypocrisy and wonk morality are the entire point and are meant to be something of a commentary/criticism, but MLP instead tends to overlook such things and try hard to sell you a whitewashing reasoning that, in light of all the evidence, simply does not fly.
(Actually personally if I were given the task of doing a new MLP series, I would turn it into basically
Lucky Star but with ponies, rather than try to tell stories at all).
And this is mostly just the morality issue. The writing and characterization issues are a whole other kettle of fish.
