Thread hop; I dodged out when people started discussing season 8 and charter schools.

Finally started season 8, finished the two-parter. While it's not as bad as Tobias implied, it is pretty politically tone-deaf. I understand what they're going for, strict adherence to the rules doesn't solve everything, but there are more options between "exact adherence to the letter of the rules (including the racist parts)" and "throw out the rulebook, flip off the regulatory body, and remind everyone that you're one of the nation's four dictators." You can color outside the lines while still drawing a recognizable picture.

What I would have gone with is something more like Accepted, where the school actually succeeds in convincing the regulatory body to allow their experimental school to go forward. In this case, maybe the rest of the board would have impeached Neighsay for being a racist.

Also, heard that season 9 will be the last season, and it hit me in the gut more than expected. I just watch the show at the gym, and I have at least something minor to complain about in every single episode, but it still feels important to me.

@fredhot Starswirl was talking out his ass with those names.

I think the element of beauty was just another way of saying "generosity". Because that's what that story was all about, really.

And part of it is that these Pillar Elements are set up along stereotypically male and female characteristics. The males are strong, brave, and accomplished in magic. The females, meanwhile, are healing, hopeful, and beautiful. Note that two of those female Elements are passive traits as well.

Her element is beauty because she was written by a man who is, at best, clueless about feminism, and at worst, outright sexist.

Are you talking about Starswirl or the writer of that episode? Genuine question, I try not to pay attention to behind the scenes stuff.

The writer, Josh Haber. I'm sure Tobias can tell you plenty more about him.

...You mean...you do not know? About him?

Oooooooooh. Ohohohohohohohohohohohoho!

Man, you're in for a ride!

Hey, tobias, you lazy, physically infeasible gecko! You got a convert waiting for you!

I wouldn't necessarily call Hope 'passive'. It's a catalyst—in fact it's THE catalyst. Without hope—some hope, any hope—all action ceases. Hope is the engine, and the hopeful can succeed where any other would lay down and wait to die, by sheer virtue of still trying.

... with that having been said I haven't actually watched the Pillars episodes, so I don't know if that idea is actually reflected in the show. It could very easily take the form of "run in blind and hope everything will turn out okay", which would be more accurately described as 'the element of being extremely fucking dead', but you know. Kid's show.

On a similar note one could argue that the meaning of 'Beauty' is Beauty of Nature or of Self, Beauty of Soul. The ability to see value where other's might not, the ability to hold the whole above the individual, while also recognizing that the whole IS individuals. The element of Sacrifice, of Compassion, of The Light that Shines Within.

Or it could be the element of People Liking You I guess.

A chunk of that ia literally the framing of her legend. But you know, lets ignore the text and come up with reasons as to why everything is terrible.

Edited by MrSeyker on Feb 20th 2019 at 8:02:59 AM

... with that having been said I haven't actually watched the Pillars episodes, so I don't know if that idea is actually reflected in the show.

None of the pillars besides Starswirl get much focus. Though the shovel guy does later get an episode.

Because it still kinda is?

Now, I'm busy hiding from tirek so he doesn't absorb my magic so, as you can tell, I haven't gotten to the Pillars of Equestria yet but, even if you try to put the Element of Beauty in the context of it being about "Inner Beauty", it still sounds wrong to describe it as reflecting the Element of Beauty because the word itself is not a virtue nor is it actually associated with being virtuous.

Plus, there's still the whole "stereotypical gender divide of old Elements" thing, which, while I will bring forth, I will not be part of because I never saw that two-parter.

@kegisak. That's the framing of Mistmane's legend, it's also how Rockhoof describes her in Rockhoof and a Hard Place in season 8.

"You always could find the beauty in things."

This isn't a case of a beautiful woman being the ELEMENT OF BEAUTY and just going around showing off her gorgeousness. Mistmane is ugly. A massive part of her origin was her giving up her surface level beauty and choosing to live a life being old and decrepid, and giving life to the world wherever she went. And she was happy to do it.

Mistmane also isn't weak. We see in her legend that she's an incredibly powerful sorceress in her own right. Managing to curbstomp a dictator with seemingly little effort, and giving life to dying things.

Edited by GNinja on Feb 21st 2019 at 2:17:14 PM

The premise that elderly women are automatically ugly is ageist. Its inclusion - indeed, emphasis, as Mistmane's tale revolves extensively around the premise that old women are hideous - does nothing to mitigate the problem of the Pillars being strictly segregated into Patriarchal male/female virtues.

This◊ is Kim Basinger. She's 65 years old and still killing it. Sure, she benefits from makeup and other cosmetics, but pro-tip: so do most young women.

Mistmane's story was written from the perspective that pretty women just naturally wake up into beauty. They get out of bed in the morning and just look fantastic without ever putting a single ounce of work into it. Which is one of the ways you know this story was written by a dude.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 21st 2019 at 7:57:58 AM

Post of the Day #2433

Posted by marston on Mon, 23rd Dec '13 4:58:20 PM - Post #31743 in the new thread

And earth ponies just get f*cked, I guess.

they have no magic powers

lol

Actually they do, it's just a little more subtle than flying or casting spells. They are supernaturally strong and have green thumbs. Without earth pony magic, they couldn't even grow crops. The Tirek arc showed this pretty clearly, too.

You call that magic?

pfff

I literally can't say ANYTHING right, can I?

I feel like everything I say on here is called racist, or sexist, or problematic.

Edited by GNinja on Feb 21st 2019 at 3:50:01 PM

(I'm kidding)

It's not your fault if others insist on finding fault everywhere.

Mistmane happens to look like a stereotypical crone, but I don't remember them saying anything about her specifically looking old, just that she gave up her (external) beauty. Ageism has buck-all to do with this. (I'm not even touching the larger Beauty Equals Goodness or Men Act, Women Are questions, at any rate.)

Also, I just realized, despite being the element of strength, Rockhoof's current job, his place in the world now, has nothing to do with strength. He's basically a bard at this point.

I guess I just hate this whole gender stereotype thing because it kinda makes me wonder about writing something JUST for the sake of subversion. Like, can we never have a blonde who's dumb ever again? A man who's primarily strong? A woman who's traditionally beautiful?

Well, it's more that he HAD to become a bard because his physical strength is apparently completely useless in modern pony society.

And I agree that Mistmane didn't strike me as being particularly old, just very wrinkly, which was more a visual metaphor for having lost her outer beauty.

I think I'm also a bit sensitive because I ADORED the Mistmane story during Campfire tales. It was by far the best story to set up any of the pillars and I found it genuinely emotionally affecting.

There's nothing wrong with a man being strong or a woman being pretty in a vacuum. The problem is the aggregate, the sum of all parts. Thematic and critical analysis is about looking beyond the characters to the ideas those characters represent. Starlight Glimmer does not exist. She is not a person. She has never made a decision in her life, because she is not alive. She is a set of ideas given shape and voice for the dual purposes of a) entertainment and b) advancing the message that a given episode wants to send.

It's in those ideas and messages that the Pillars of Equestria become a problem.

Consider the Mane Six. Rarity is a vain, narcissistic, beauty-obsessed drama queen and Fluttershy is a kind, loving, gentle-hearted Shrinking Violet. But Rainbow Dash is a boisterous rock-star super-athlete and Applejack is a hard-working rock of pure muscle. This makes them very effective role models for little girls, because they speak to the idea that you can be anything; traditionally masculine or feminine, it doesn't matter. Your gender does not define you.

In today's society, this is a very important message to send. Our media is saturated with the message that men can only be heroes and women can only be their girlfriends or the token Faux Action Girl who doesn't really do anything but stand near the heroic boys looking badass. We desperately need works like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

The problem with the Pillars is that there are six of them and they all, each and every single one of them, conform 100% to gender-stereotypes. If, say, Rockhoof was the Pillar of Beauty and Mistmane the Pillar of Strength, but Flash was still Bravery and Meadowbrook was still Healing, then we wouldn't have a problem. But that is not the case.

The Manes as characters are used to explore both straight and subverted gender archetypes as well as to delve into the complexities thereof. The Pillars, conversely, just play those archetypes straight as a board with no effort spent in challenging the rote societal definitions of masculinity and femininity.

The show presents the Pillars as the OG Mane Six, the Heroes of our Heroes, the Role Models to our Role Models. Ideally, they should complement the themes that the Mane Six embody: that you can be anything. But they don't. They contradict those themes by representing their opposite ideal: men should be masculine, women should be feminine, and never the twain shall cross.

Now, did Haber undermine the central premise of the Manes on purpose? Probably not. I doubt he sits in an evil lair somewhere, steepling his fingers and cackling, "Ahahaha, I shall destroy the feminist themes of this show with my mighty pen!" He just wrote it like he would any other show.

But the fact that the Pillars came out this way speaks to the ingrained biases in men as opposed to the women who originally created this show. It's symptomatic of the larger problem with MLP's later seasons: the gradual shift away from being a female-led series, with more and more privileged men blissfully ignorant of gender concerns taking hold of the writer's pen.

Haber wrote the Pillars to be an evenly-divided group of Super MEN(TM) and Super WOMEN(TM) and probably never paid it a second thought. And that feels like a huge step backward for a series that emphasizes feminist philosophy as much as MLP used to.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 21st 2019 at 9:45:12 AM

If they had leaned a bit harder on that, they could have made it work. Made it about how, despite them all being great heroes, they were still shaped and limited by the time they lived in. They did a bit of that with Starswirl and his aggressive treatment of villains, so just more of that. Flash could be surprised that Rainbow Dash is an athlete/emergency services/whatever the hell the Wonderbolts are supposed to be, Stronghoof automatically assumes that Big Mac is in charge of the orchard instead of Applejack, so on and so on.

But that would have required the pillars to stick around for more than five minutes, so.