The point was to show how the story would have worked without the villaiin part.

On a professional level, I don't have a problem with Ember. She's often entertaining when she's onscreen. Her shtick of being perpetually disgusted-yet-intrigued by friendship has produced some pretty fun moments.

It's just that on a personal level, I don't like her archetype and by extension her. She's not a bad character; she's just not to my taste.

Thorax is fun. I like the fact that he's a Non-Action Guy and that's okay. He doesn't need to be an aggressive violence-lord. He's passive to the point of out-and-out meekness and that's not presented as a flaw or something he has to overcome; he's allowed to be meek. That's just who he is.

I mean, there was that one time that he blew up Chrysalis with love beams. But. You know. Haber. He wrote an episode about Thorax seizing control of his civilization and culture from its queen by beating her up with magic violence. And then the Hive instantly transformed into a utopian paradise where everyone loves and cherishes one another just as soon as it wasn't being run by a woman. Because of course he did.

But Haber didn't create Thorax nor does his nonsense exclusively define him (coughcoughSunburst). He's a welcome presence in most episodes he turns up in; a walking antidote to Toxic Masculinity, embracing and embodying the idea that masculinity does not have to be defined by aggression and violence.

This is one of the reasons why I headcanon that Twilight's not very close to her biological family. Not only was she unaware of the wedding; she didn't even know who Mi Amore Cadenza was. Shining Armor had to explain Cadance's name to her, indicating that they had managed to go an entire courtship without Twilight ever even hearing about it in passing.

It's reasonable when you consider that Twilight went away to what is basically a boarding school at a young age, and then moved to the next town over from there. She and her parents might write letters to each other but if they do, we've certainly never seen it. And at keystone moments in her life like her coronation ceremony, they were present but never said a word to her.

Until "Once Upon a Zeppelin", Twilight's parents were basically background cameos to the major events of her life. A startling contrast against "The Crystalling", where they eagerly show up to see the new baby but, once again, barely even acknowledge Twilight's existence.

I'm sure they love their daughter and, in fact, we do get to see that from them in "Once Upon a Zeppelin". They just don't really know her anymore - which we also see when Night Light takes a moment to explain to Twilight what her mother's like on their way to boarding. She's not unwanted or unloved; she's just estranged, and nowhere is that more evident than the surprise whammy of Shining Armor's impending nuptials.

Applejack heard about Shining Armor's acronym and promptly decided that she needed one too. Makes sense to me.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 12th 2018 at 3:30:58 AM

In other words, not at all, since it's built on the assumption Chysalis exists and falls apart without her.

The episode doesn't fall apart without her, though. You could have literally every aspect of the episode except the Chrysalis reveal, and it would still be an effective first and second act to a story.

The only difference would be that Twilight, not "Cadance", is the episode's antagonist. The Chrysalis reveal fundamentally reshapes the story from being about Clingy Jealous Sister vs. Bridezilla to being Virtuous Hero Who Did Nothing Wrong vs. Evil Shapeshifting Imposter.

The thing about the Changedlings. What I liked about To Change a Changeling was that the episode seemed to exist to throw some kind of wrench into the "They all become a utopian super race." thing. It shows that they're kinda a bunch of judgey pricks.

It's actually my belief that they turned on Chrysalis entirely because it was a better deal for them. Not because they turned 'good'. Thorax is just taking advantage of this situation to try and steer them towards enjoying being good. He seems to believe they'll kick him out too if he doesn't give them what they want.

Edited by GNinja on Jul 12th 2018 at 2:47:14 AM

And that's not even taking that secondary disconnect into consideration, that of Twilight's family, her brother in particular, completely snubbing her, and not even acknowledging or properly apologizing for it. Shining just evades and then distracts with something Twi will like, without ever actually apologizing. He even gets Twilight to apologize, instead, who had every right to be pissed at him.

This is what I mean by the villain pulling the rug from under the interpersonal conflicts an episode has been building up. It just cheapens those conflicts by revealing that someone was mind controlled, or bodysnatched, or was evil all along. It also has the effect of forcing a conflict into good vs evil roles, where there was no such clean divide before. The Jealous Sister vs Bridezilla conflict here is a case in point. Both sides are doing things wrong, but there is no "good" side to this fight, or an evil one.

That is a fair point about the rug being pulled out. However, the episode is still very clearly built around Chrysalis existing and working toward that. The other things are just a vehicle to arrive at the true conflict and I think that's why it seems like they're building something that just gets snubbed—they took complicated issues and used them to pave a simple path to what they were really aiming to write. With that in mind, you can't remove Chrysalis without turning the episode into Swiss cheese. The lead-up conficts might work on their own if the episode were to be fully retooled to suit the new story.

@Librarian: The problem has never so much been that the other cultures learn from the ponies, so much as that the ponies never learn from the other cultures.

Let me give a somewhat selfish, but also somewhat pertinent, example from the web novel I'm working on, Birthright (2017).

In Birthright, Dragons are an ethnic and cultural minority in a human-dominated country, having started to move their due to a blossoming trade relationship that started in the wake of a large war. The Dragons share some similarities with the dragons in MLP (Having been partially inspired by them, though with dragons any one source is a drop in the bucket): they're not an inherently social species but band together anyways, although they reject centralized leadership in favour of a tribal system, and they have a close relationship with the earth and minerals, albeit as craftsmen rather than as a food source. They're also large, intimidating, and their culture is less opposed to violence than human culture. Though they're cautious about it when it would actually stick.

It's pointed out several times through the story, mainly by the dragons themselves, that they have a good deal that they could learn from the humans. Their culture was designed to bring an asocial species together in order to survive in a deeply hostile environment, and many elements of it look brutal through the lense of the human culture, which evolved in a lush and prosperous land. It's the main reason Dragons started settling there—to have a chance to leave those brutal elements behind.

But at the same time, the running theme of the story is the protagonist, a human, coming to realize just how much she can learn from their culture. Their culture has a strong emphasis on self-improvement and open-mindedness, as well as a system of duty in the name of creating absolute trust among a tribe. They also have a rich tradition of art and self-expression, and view craftsmanship as a form of worship. One of the early moment of the protagonist connecting with dragons revolves around her teaching them to embroider, and them teaching her the concept of Tshakuk—that true art is a divine act, because it brings something totally new into the world.

(Being the future leader of the country the rest of the plot is that the protagonist needs to learn about the Dragons' culture in order to be a good leader, but that's not as relevant)

The point of the culture is that neither culture is perfect—but by having them together, by learning from each other, they can bolster each other's weaknesses.

And that just doesn't really happen in MLP. There's never really anything about Draconic culture that's presented in a positive light. Even the few aspects that could be portrayed as positive (Such as Spike's 'dragon code', which may or may not be a real thing) are typically treated as issues. The one element that's portrayed positively is Ember's forwardness—and that's more of a personality trait than a cultural element, even if it's a common one among Dragons.

The school had the potential to bring in some other cultural ideas to Equestria, but, while I haven't been keeping up with the latest season, it doesn't seem to have ever done that.

(It also never really feels like it groks on the idea of culture being more than songs and dances but that's a completely different thing and one I'm more inclined to forgive them for because legitimately building a half-dozen unique histories, philosophies and worldviews takes a lot of damned effort for a cartoon)

If what I've read is correct, the hearthswarming episode this season will involve each culture's version of the holiday as told by the students. So there's a chance we might see something there.

If you take away the obviously evil acts,

If you take away the obviously evil acts, Voldemort seems like a decent guy.

Anyway, I think it's fine to think about how episodes could have been written differently or interpreted differently, as long as you don't confuse your fanon for reality.

For example, I like to joke about Flurry Heart being a heinous dark lord and found it amusing that in "A Flurry of Emotions", you can interpret Flurry Heart as being an evil mastermind without even changing anything about the episode. But I never seriously thought that that was the intended audience reaction.

So, all in all, I don’t think we were meant to sympathize with Twilight at all, at least, not after the first act.

See, this is the part I disagree with. As other people have mentioned, arguing for something while explicitly ignoring all evidence to the contrary does not make for a convincing argument. Now I'm sorely tempted to do a review of A Flurry of Emotions in the same style.

Post of the Day #2211

Watched "Molt Down." Three episodes down, two to go. Will be caught up in no time.

Just got "Marks for Effort" and "The Mean Six" left.

Your thoughts so far?

Double post because this is interesting to me:

Pinkie Pie: A Modern Epicurus

Huh, that was pretty interesting.

The alternative explanation is that Pinkie can only do all those things as long as they are funny, so it is impossible to exploit.

I found that article to be more of an explanation as to why she does what she does, now how.

I liked A Canterlot Wedding because of its message of "don't let family members marry abusi've assholes". An important message that still applies without Cadance being fake.

Post of the Day #2212

As someone who was probably not terribly far away from being stuck in a marriage with an abusive ex and who has also seen a friend of my sister's decide to marry someone who shamelessly cheated on him several times, I concur. Granted, I'd hope they'd have the sense to come talk to me in private and outline the issues they have in a coherent manner—not run into the rehearsal screaming like a bunch of lunatics.

Post of the Day #2213

That post almost made sense. Almost.

Ah, I love Yona. It's nice to have a really cute Yak that seems like a real sweetheart.

Also, the whole Yak superiority thing might be a hat, but at least it gives her a noticeable personality trait.

Post of the Day #2214

Channel Awesome is synonymous with drama it seems