Kids also pick up on cultural norms, though, what is supposed to be normal and what isn't. And they do this from a startingly young age. Toddlers already have opinions about how boys and girls are supposed to behave, they pick this up from the culture around them and absorb it into their world view.

This is ultimately why things like racism and sexism are so ingrained and slow to change. It is baked into the culture, and we learn those norms, right or wrong, at a very young age, decades before they are able to form an informed opinion on the subject.

This is why parenting is so important. Without parents showing the way, culture would be much slower to change.

Exactly.

Comedy isn't just transgression of norms. It's communicative transgression of norms. A pie in the face is funny because, at some level, the recipient of the pie in the face deserved to receive it. When Tom chases Jerry and is persistently maimed, it's funny because Tom is the aggressor and thus deserving of retributive violence. Tom's traps successfully killing Jerry would not be comedic, because Jerry is the wounded party of their altercation.

A joke is a sincere idea expressed in a ridiculous way. We can laugh at Wile E. Coyote getting his comeuppance because we accept the premise that the Coyote deserves it. We agree with the idea that the joke expresses, and can therefore find amusement in its ridiculous exaggeration of that idea.

This is very specifically why the Asshole Victim is so common in comedy. If Bugs Bunny was trolling a hapless old woman in the hospital, it wouldn't be funny at all because his victim would be completely undeserving of such antics. But put him up against a sport hunter like Elmer Fudd, make Fudd the aggressor of their conflict, and suddenly Bugs's "Dr. Killpatient" routine is hilarious.

It's also why so much of Discord's comedy tends to fall flat and just come across as obnoxious: because his targets are so often undeserving of the treatment, he winds up coming across as a mean-spirited bully instead of a delightful wildcard. But have someone make a comment about how weird it is that Fluttershy would socialize with someone like him and suddenly "Judgy. Clerk. Pony." is funny. Because he's the wounded party, and therefore the audience is inclined to sympathize with him.

There is more to a joke than "LOL exaggeration". Every joke has an idea behind it and it's hard to laugh at a joke when you strongly disagree with the idea it's predicated on. More dangerously, repetition of jokes about a toxic idea at an early age - say, "LOL left-handed people are all amoral scumbags" - can engrain that idea in a child's mind such that it slowly becomes embraced as a personal fact.

Children shape their worldview through the ideas they are exposed to.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 8th 2018 at 11:30:39 AM

I think what Spike and Twilight's relationship in this episode reminded me of was something like Lilo and Nani's relationship from Lilo and Stitch — a sort of awkwardly defined situation where, despite on paper being something closer to siblings, one character serves as the other's primary caretaker, source of authority and parental figure. Twilight may not be Spike's mom de jure, and they may not consciously refer to each other as "mom" and "son" — which in turn might be a workable Watsonian explanation for why the show's danced around the subject for so long — but that's very much the role that Twilight plays in Spike's life.

Terminology aside, the show has always depicted Twilight as Spike's primary authority figure. He interacts regularly with other adult characters, but Twilight has always been the one to oversee his schedules, set his bedtimes, discipline him when he steps out of line, give him permission to head out and do things and generally play the role of the parent or guardian in their relationship.

@NathanDrake

Applejack seems to have gotten herself in this awkward situation where her farm is chronically short-staffed because there's only two able-bodied ponies looking after the whole thing at any given time but she's too proud to ask for help, so she's gotta weasel in extra aid without making it look like that's what she's doing.

I mean, it's been made clear on a number of occasions that just Applejack and Big Mac aren't enough to run the whole farm efficiently or with room for error — this was established as early on as "Applebuck Season" and "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000", really. It's not really surprising that Applejack likes to grab free work whenever she can.

@GNinja

That's part of the reason why I don't read that scene as quite that... unfortunate. The common thread connecting the "character is acting like they're naked even though they don't usually wear clothes" scenes isn't that the ones acting modest are all female, it's that they're all characters we're meant to see as likable — we've seen this gag with Fluttershy in the Cider Squeezy episode, Rarity in "Make New Friends but Keep Discord" and Sunburst in "Uncommon Bond", to my knowledge.

The two instances where the character being "exposed" wasn't ashamed but appeared either oblivious or flaunting it, depending on your reading, were Sludge in this episode and Discord during his hospital gown bit in "Three's a Crowd", and in both cases it was from characters being very clearly portrayed as obnoxious assholes. Kids pick up on things very quickly, yes, but in this case I think the pattern seems to be "nice people are modest, assholes aren't".

That being said, I think the scene really didn't need to frame Twilight's reaction between Sludge's legs and crotch. That... wasn't necessary, no.

Honestly, anything can come off as toxic if you put your mind to it.

That doesn't make any sense.

It's not really complicated.

You can definitely make a distinction between things that are toxic and things that aren't, so saying "everything" can be interpreted as toxic if you try hard enough clearly is not true.

Only if one doesn't know what the concept actually is and that's pretty much the most difficult hoop: coaxing the bugger next to you to think that this idea in fiction is wrong.

Post of the Day #2299

You never been on tumblr than.

Edited by AfroProduction96 on Oct 9th 2018 at 7:08:33 AM

I only visit the sane parts of tumblr, which take about quantum physics or Magic the Gathering.

I think you'd be interested in reading about the Benign Violation Theory of Humor. As far as I can tell, it's currently the best explanation the study of psychology has for what humor really is.

According to this theory, the things we find funny are all violations of norms, boundaries, or social standards. But the only thing that seperates humor from discomfort is that, when something is funny to someone, it's because that person perceives the transgression of norms as benign or nonthreatening.

So if a joke comes of as "problematic", so to speak, it's almost always because there's a disconnect between the audience and the joke-teller about what's transgressive or harmless.

I'm glad I got off tumblr. I was there for the Ask a Pony blogs, as well as Wil Wheaton and a few others, but I got out of there in mid 2014, not long after Dashcon.

EDIT: Real talk, how many Ask A Pony blogs are still up and running? I know Fluffles came to an end after a five year run, and Jan got screwed by the lawyers so he doesn't do anything anymore, but are there any other high profile ones (especially the ones listed on the page) that aren't going anymore?

Edited by Rytex on Oct 9th 2018 at 9:47:08 AM

So, the kirin episode. Overall, it feels like a lesson similar to All Bottled Up in the sense of both episodes being about angry feelings, but this time from a friendship/relationship perspective rather than a personal mental health issue.

Also, an episode featuring a non-pony society that almost doesn't feel like bringing pony values to distant lands (if we completely ignore the friendship mission context). I mean, Autumn Blaze pretty much resolves the core of the issue herself. AJ and Fluttershy just happened to provide the impetus to get back into town and talk some sense into the others.

Also also, I like the song. The reference to the Phantom of the Opera in particular cracks me up.

@Story: What game is this with a ridiculous level cap? Also, is the link going to the wrong post for anyone else?

Interestingly, humor and horror have the same idea at their basis: the transgression of norms. This explains why humor can turn dark so easily, or why something supposed to elicit horror can also give amusement. Transgression of norms can easily go either way.

A great example is this scene from Nosferatu:

This scene of Nosferatu rising out of his coffin is supposed to be straight up horror (and perhaps in its day it was genuinely scary). But show this to a modern audience today, and they will snicker at how ridiculous it looks (as did my class on film adaptation studies).

And this is also present in MLP, pretty much from the first episode. Remember how Pinkie's talent is first demonstrated: she laughs at scary things. She turns the horror of the forest into a joke by laughing at it.

@Story: What game is this with a ridiculous level cap? Also, is the link going to the wrong post for anyone else?

It's going to the wrong place for me as well. I'll have to look into it. Thanks for catching that.

Interesting theory. By its logic, that also means that someone could easily turn something from humour to horror if they're actively trying to be offended by stuff.

The philosophy of the game sounds a lot like Disgaea. The numbers don't quite line up for the older games, though, so unless the more modern sequels have gotten even more stupid about it, it might be something else.

I know a few. Jitterbug Jive keeps his going, along with Ask The Capricorn Crew and some others. But yeah, the Ask A Pony Blog golden age has come and gone.

As for Tumblr I'm still on it, mainly for the art scene, but there are a few times where I get annoyed with the Black-and-White Morality of the place sometimes, particularly in fandoms. I actually had one girl claim that My Hero Academia is a rip-off of Little Witch Academia and the show was bad because of that.

Not to mention she didn't like Infinity War because she claimed it was just ripping off Voltron because the plot centered around a set of different-colored items and the villain was purple.

Yeah, seems like the Tumblr pony blog crowd has largely fallen into one of two categories over time:

• The little guys who never got any attention getting disillusioned and abandoning their blog
• The super famous guys who took their success for granted, decided they were bored, and buggered off without notice

Yeah, I knew the Golden Age of the AAP blogs was gone (I feel it went when the Silver Age of the Fandom started to die down in late 2015), I just didn't know how many were still up, stubbornly insisting they weren't dead.

Wow. Been a long time since I've heard that old chestnut.

Well, Jack Thompson was disbarred eleven years ago.

I also suspect a lot of it was people losing interest over time, moving on with their lives etc. Which is a major factor in the decline of the fandom over all.

What was I gonna say. I had something to say.

I was gonna say something about this discussion about reading too much into things and getting offended.

I was gonna say, like, ya, that happens.

But like, I had something else to counter my own statement.

But I'm sleepy so y'all don't get this topic barred by the time I wake up, okay?