My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Live Reactions & Discussion)

Though not here I have, albeit somewhat wryly, referred to Luna's creation of The Tantabus as 'self-flagellation' before.

But The Tantabus does have some real world mirrors, however I don't think they're self-harm. Rather, a lot of people have the tendency to hold onto guilt for one reason or another - lack of self-esteem, a genuine belief that something is their fault and they need to be punished in some way, and it's difficult for them to assuage the guilt without that punishment. For others, the guilt is a way of assigning themselves relevance - "Your fault is in assuming anyone cares enough about you to be dissapointed". So ultimately I don't think the Tantabus is self-harm, so much as keeping too tight a grip on guilt. Ultimately the moral of the episode is that one must be willing to forgive oneself for their mistakes. The day we learn all adults are imperfect, we become adolescent. The day we forgive them, we become adults. The day we forgive ourselves, we become wise.

Still! Regardless of whether or not a meaning exists intentionally in a work, that it is seen is proof that it exists. My Little Pony may not be didactic, but it's viewers are. The writers can't be blamed for poor handling of a subject matter they didn't intend to handle, but one can still analyze and criticize a work for poor handling of a theme if it can be observed and defended, and I think ultimately the Tantabus-as-metaphor-for-self-harm position is defensible.

Still looking at Art of Equestria. You know Rainbow Dash's huge house? It's actually a condominium called Cloudominium.

edited 13th Oct '15 3:11:23 PM by DS9guy

So Dash has a condo instead of a masnion?

Makes a bit more sense, though she's still done pretty well for herself.

Also... how the hell did they get funding for an inherently pegasus-only housing unit? Isn't that like, a whites-only gated community?

Next Season: Someone points out to Dash that her Apartment Block is full of super racists.

edited 13th Oct '15 3:13:25 PM by kegisak

Pegasi have to live somewhere and we like living in the clouds.

edited 13th Oct '15 3:17:14 PM by OrionAurora

Give us the filly, and wipe away the debt!

edited 13th Oct '15 3:21:32 PM by SantosLHalper

^^Yeah, but you don't see Unicorns living in places that only they can go to, you racist douche! I'm gonna go bitch about this on Tumblr now!

Come to think of it, I wonder if there are any pegasi who don't like the ground at all and spend all of they're time up in the clouds. I wonder this due to having read a cute fic where we find out that Filly RD was afraid of the ground because she heard stories about it having monsters, and then having to reluctantly go down there to make sure Fluttershy was okay after knocking her off {The fic takes place right after RD's flashback scene in Sonic Rainboom}.

edited 13th Oct '15 3:23:06 PM by marston

It's just Jerry Peet being her normal, "I am a genius who is the ultimate authority in all things I dine to speak of, and you are a moron if you do not agree with me" pretentious, "I'm a 'critic' because I always find something to bitch about in anything and it's only that part that matters," full of bullshit self.

Firebrand did a video on the exact same topic that handled it MUCH better. Jerry, just made me want to beat her over the head with all the loaded, inconsistent, false, and just plain bullshit she spewed while shoving the facts agsint everything she spouted in her face. Firebrand, actually did a good job explaining that case. Still disagree with him, but he didn't come off like a preachy asshole.

The whole issue is down to just how much 'harm' Luna was doing to herself with the Tantabus. Given we have seen not one other symptom of it actually doing any, she never acted like it was, and all of her stress came from fear of others being hurt through her cations, not what the tantabus itself was doing to her alone... yeah hard to claim it was actually doing any real 'harm' to count as some big self harm issue. It's more like someone looking through an album or watching a movie recounting their greatest failure every night to make sure they never forget it. Still not healthy, but a far cry from what they are claiming made this whole deal so crappy.

@Marston: I heard that Canterlot is the main home for the unicorns. Does that help?

Mudkipz: To be perfectly honest, I was pretty nervous my first time (I was really unsure if my head was up to par or not). However, adding to what Keg mentioned, part of what helped was observing cosplayers and seeing them to be well-received while at a point when I wasn't cosplaying yet helped me decide that I wanted to try it. Now that I've done it a few times, I can say that there's this feedback loop where everyone passes around the enthusiasm. Plus getting to talk shop with other cosplayers in the cosplay lounge is a really cool experience.

Yeah, I never found the Tantabus to really be a parallel to self-harm. It felt more like self-punishment to me. That one kind of made Luna feel like a woobie to me. I mean, everypony forgave her for her actions as Nightmare Moon ages ago, yet she could not forgive herself. The episode also implied every episode she was in, heck every day, ended in a bad ending for her as she would always have that thing waiting for her to make her dreams a living hell.

It also did incorporate the vicious cycle the line of thinking she had could cause too (punishing yourself for an action you feel guilty about, which in turn reinforces the guilt and the thought that you must be punished for it)

@ Confidence when cosplaying

So the secret is not giving a shit what others think of it? It sounds much simpler when put into text, but I feel like even if they don't say a word, my paranoia would kick in and make me feel like they are judging. However, my friends will be around so they can likely reassure me if it does start acting up (they already know how I am like when it comes to panicking and worrying :/ )

I'm not too entirely sure what you are meaning, but seeing the cosplayers at Ponycon, plus one of my friend's talking about properly cosplaying for her next convention made me interested in trying if I can iron out all the problems I am having with doing it.

edited 13th Oct '15 3:49:52 PM by Mudkipz

@Kegisak: I think I generally agree with your assessment that "Do Princesses Dream of Magical Sheep" is more of a lesson about forgiving oneself rather than meant to be a representation of self-harm. That was how I interpreted it when I first saw it, and I found it to be moving (in a positive way) for personal reasons that I'm not sure how to explain here.

As for pegasi having cloud cities that unicorns and Earth ponies can't visit without magical intervention, the main cloud city we know of is Cloudsdale, which is where the weather factory is (and pegasi are the only ponies who can physically manipulate things like clouds and the weather in general outside of possibly some unicorn spells). Just like how some towns in real life grew out of being the center of a specific industry, perhaps Cloudsdale is in the clouds because the weather factory has to be in the clouds in order to be high enough and mobile enough to send the weather all across Equestria.

edited 13th Oct '15 4:25:27 PM by Rainbow

We saw Rarity controlling the weather with magic didn't we? Granted, she was doing badly, but that was more because of her personality than her abilities.

Pegasi don't fall through clouds because pegasus magic, but how do you account for furniture and stuff in a cloud home?

Pegasi aren't magic, clouds are magic. Clouds = friendship.

Perhaps they are enchanted with a spell similar to the one that lets non-winged ponies walk on clouds without any danger.

Hey, if YOU could walk around on clouds all day, sleep on clouds, have everything you touch be a fluffy soft cloud rather then cold, hard dirt and stone, wouldn't you choose the clouds?

Mudkipz: Basically, it boils down to me previously not giving much thought to cosplaying. But after seeing how well-received other costumes were, I felt like I could give it a try.

My furniture is made from clouds. And no, despite what Sereph said, not all clouds are soft and fluffy.

Does that mean different types of clouds have different textures? What does a cirrus cloud feel like compared to a cumulonimbus?

To play the devil's advocate on the self-harm issue, one could interpret self-harm in a multitude of ways. Most people are likely to think of it as the cutting of wrists or other physical harms, but one can put a lot of deliberate mental strain on themselves as well. There's a reason I still regard it as self-flagellation. Deliberate placing oneself in a situation that's mentally stressful, and refusing to let go of guilt, constantly berating oneself with it, is harmful to the psyche. Luna may not be cutting herself, but she is not well, and she is hurting herself in the long-term. Metaphors don't need to be 1-to-1 comparable. The writer's clearly didn't mean to draw a parallel to physical self-harm, but they did mean to refer to mental self-harm, and in many ways they come from the same place. Or so I'm given to understand, I'm not going to pretend like I'm a psychologist here. And hey, dragging out this conversation is self-harm for me, and it's not like I'm guilty of anything in particular. I mean I did kill all those people but I don't feel bad about it, so whatever.

Back to racist condos, I'll accept a weather factory needing to be in the clouds for various reasons - it seems to be a mobile enterprise to facilitate seasonal changes across the country - but a cloud-based condominium seems fairly exclusionary. It's difficult to call racism on it of course, but constructing something you know only one group of people will have physical access to isn't really much different from slapping a "No X allowed" sign on the front.

Also I want to establish out of hand I'm being facetious here; I'm not actually accusing the condominium makers of racism. They have access to damn-near unrestricted zoning, incredibly easy construction, and a niche but willing clientele. Unfortunate Implications aside all they're really doing is taking advantage of a business opportunity. So they're not racist, they're just filthy capitalist swine.

Yes, it was clearly not healthy, the issue is just how unhealthy being taken to the extreme without any actual backup or evidence it is anywhere near as bad as they are claiming it is. Like I said, it's like dwelling on memories, pictures, movies etc... of a past regret or failure. Not healthy, something you should get some help with and come to terms with, but not the massive issue they are making it out to be.

Add to that, they aren't human! We've seen the ponies mental states are at once both far more fragile, and far far FAR more durable then ours. Something as small as a single day of friends not wanting to hang out leading to a massive mental breakdown of the "Inanimate objects are talking to me" kind. And yet she can snap right back and be perfectly fine with no ill effects with just a single line. And nearly everypony has had snaps like that.

When a pony snaps, they SNAP, but they also recover extremely quickly.

@Kyler: Cirrus clouds feel loose and wavy like the fur on my coat. cumulonimbus clouds feel dense, kind of like thick rubber.

I object to the notion that damage to one's psyche is less a 'big deal' than physical harm. She won't kill herself, sure, but she's on the fast track to giving herself a mental disorder - if the fact that she's doing this doesn't suggest she has one already. Ultimately mental self-harm and physical self-harm can both lead to the same place.

It's more than simply dwelling on pictures, though. Luna created a being that she has to fight, consistently, in order to remind herself of her failures. She is actively punishing herself for her crimes. In mental terms she's not merely reminding herself that she failed—that would be just replaying the scene of her failure in her mind—but consistently dredging up that guilt and blaming herself for it, over and over, every night. The trouble is that it's a space whale issue: it's difficult to come up with a really solid comparison to something that has no real-world equivalent.

Additionally, Luna regularly goes into the dreams of ponies, and it seems to her to be a fairly real place. It's impossible to tell to what degree it affects her physically, but it's clear that her efforts in the dream do at least exhaust her. The effects of the Tantabus may very well hurt her in a real way.

Another thought on cloud-based cities and condos is that they could have been built in the days before the three types of ponies came together, like the earlier times mentioned in the Hearth's Warming Eve play. So maybe the pegasi WERE trying to exclude the other ponies at the time Cloudsdale was built, but even though now they'd probably love to allow unicorns and Earth ponies to live there, they physically can't without causing problems to the weather factory's mobility and accessibility to the ponies who work there.

edited 13th Oct '15 5:01:09 PM by Rainbow

I'm not saying it's healthy, I said the exact opposite. Yeah it's something unhealthy and she needed to get help in dealing with. Nor the mental trauma wasn't just as if not worse then physical. I'm saying, like you said, we have 0 idea of just what effects this had on her, and all it seemed to do was just give her bad dreams of seeing herself turn back into NMM.

This is why I hate allegory so much. unless it is a damn near 1:1 comparison, at which point, why not just use what it really is, it can't be what you are claiming it is, because there are innate, hard differences between them.