A thread to discuss My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the tie-in media.
All of the usual forum rules
apply. In addition, please remember that the thread is discussing a kids' show, and it's primarily focused on the work itself, not the fanfic — in particular, we don't want to see lewdness creeping in.
Edited by Mrph1 on Aug 26th 2024 at 10:24:26 AM
Luna served time for what she did prior to the show. She received no punishment for what she did after escaping.
That's like saying if someone escapes from prison, they shouldn't be punished for any crimes they commited after escaping and should be free to steal/murder/rape/etc. As much as they want. That's ridiculous.
There's a reason the end of episode 2 nearly prevented me from ever watching another episode of the show.
Also, two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Edit: Also, ![]()
that's a really edgy claim. What are you talking about?
Edited by Sereg on Nov 13th 2020 at 10:04:52 AM
Post of the Day #3062
Pretty good. A bit stereotypical. Not all South Africans sound like that (I don't). Sounds like a very heavy Afrikaner accent. Probably a more rural one. Or maybe from the more isolated parts of Pretoria. It's a rather purer Afrikaner than you're likely to get so probably from a more issolated area. There's rather large variety in South African accents which can bleed into each other a bit. For instance, I literally felt my accent shift when I started going to University in Pretoria, so I now sound more like that than I used to, but I'm still a long way off in my opinion. Of course, outsiders would find it harder to distinguish between the various South African accents.
Posted by Sereg on Thu, 28th Jun '12 11:36:07 AM - Post #237475 in the old thread
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayThe problem with punishing Luna is the same as the problem with punishing Sunset Shimmer: rainbow lobotomy. The Elements of Harmony blast her with Friendship Magic and this totally deletes her existing character, replacing her with a complete stranger bearing literally no resemblance at all to the villain.
I don't think this is what the writers meant for it to be, but in practice, that is what happens. Sunset Shimmer of Rainbow Rocks forward and Princess Luna are not "same character, but not doing the bad stuff anymore" like Discord or Trixie. They're totally alien to the villains they were in Equestria Girls and the Friendship is Magic two-parter. There is nothing left of the original character in them; only a bit of remorse about "I did a bad once!" that they bring up from time to time.
This makes discussion of consequences... tricky. In a fair system (not the American one), the purpose of incarceration would be to remove a person from society while educating and rehabilitating them to avoid repeating the crimes of the past. Season Six Starlight Glimmer is the closest the show ever comes to this.
But for Luna and Sunset, what would even be the point? Rainbow friendship beams, BOOM, all of your bad qualities are erased, your personality is totally wiped out, and you are within seconds a fully rehabilitated person, and then... what? Send you to prison just 'cause?
There are, uh, concerns about the protagonists using a MacGuffin to just wipe out people's bad qualities and lightswitch "redeem" (ugh) them on the spot, but that's what the show went with. For depiction of punitive measures against these characters to seem even remotely justified, the rainbow lobotomies would need to not be here in the plot.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 13th 2020 at 8:27:06 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Could you please not be snide and actually provide a argument or counter-argument? That would be a better contribution to the thread and, really, any conversation in general.
This isn't really that hot, we've talked about "Rainbow Lobotomies" for a while now. We've noted that Luna and Shimmer don't really struggle with being the same shitheads they were and both of them were hit by the Elements of Harmony.
Edited by fredhot16 on Nov 13th 2020 at 8:54:30 AM
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.![]()
Creatively, it's really not. Throughout its seasons, MLP is kind of amazing in how it runs the gamut of what not to do with your villains, running the spectrum all the way from instantly forgiving abusers to child prisons.
Starlight Glimmer's season six rehabilitative arc is the closest the show ever comes to a reasonable resolution for a former villain, though even that has its flaws and it ends stupidly.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 13th 2020 at 9:03:18 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.O.K, just going to say this quickly: JRW, please have a actual argument rather then snide comments if you're going to say something to this
, please. That will make things go better and help keep things civil and constructive.
Edited by fredhot16 on Nov 13th 2020 at 9:13:50 AM
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.Most MLP villains have what I like to call narrative glass jaws. They're designed to be intensely powerful insurmountable brick walls of force. They're totally invulnerable and can effortlessly win everything, and they do it with a lot of style and charisma that makes them fun to watch.
This puts the protagonists into a situation where they have to accomplish a thing like developing bonds of friendship or reuniting lovers or extending a hoof in trust, forgiveness, and friendship to a remorseless jerk that is actively betraying them right this second. Something. Doing that thing is what the plot is actually about, and once the thing is done and the evildoer's role is served, the invulnerable villain goes down in one punch.
It doesn't really matter what the punch is. Maybe it's these magic plot-solving gems. Maybe the lovers cast a Win The Plot spell. Maybe the ponies all turn into Super Saiyan Magical Girls. What matters, what the episodes are about, is the characters' journey to get to the punch.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 13th 2020 at 10:18:09 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Considering what i heard about this kind of stuff from the show, judging by Lily Orchard's observations, the writers of the show are not very good at the whole redemption or rehabilitation thing.
They're really not, in large part because they emphasized redemption (an insubstantial statement that a character now qualifies as "a good person", regardless of actual change, growth, or consequence) over rehabilitation (a process by which a bad person is taught the error of their ways, made to confront the causes for their bad qualities, and learns to overcome them).
Blanket statement: redemption is always bad. Always. There is no good way to write a redemption because redemption is a broken concept.
Redemption runs on the idea that there are exactly two kinds of people: white hats and black hats. White hats can only do good, never evil, and black hats can only do evil, never good. Thus, if a character who was evil does something good, any good thing, that character signals that they are now a white hat. Regardless of whether or not this good thing actually conflicts with their motives for villainy.
As a result, redemption is insubstantial. It doesn't really mean anything. It comes in many forms but its function is to be a sort of cosmic forgiveness for a formerly wicked character (or a good character who did something wicked). It's an author just telling the audience, "This character is a Good Person now," without actually putting in the work.
For an adequately rehabilitated character, you don't need a grandiose EUREKA gesture of redemption. You don't need characters to stare into the camera and say, "Isn't this character SUCH A GOOD PERSON now?" You don't need to have a cosmic rule of existence deem the character good. You don't need them to die so that their commitment to goodness can never be questioned (and the question about punishment conveniently sidestepped).
For an adequately rehabilitated character, you don't need to devote an episode (or a moment within the episode) to telling the audience that they should start liking and/or forgive the character now. The audience already has.
MLP doesn't have any characters like that.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 13th 2020 at 10:39:59 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I'm not sure that is entirely right. You can redeem yourself for certain things. You just can't cross the Moral Event Horizon first.
If you are a petty thief, for instance, you could redeem yourself by trying to return or repay what you stole, and by becoming a better person who doesn't commit petty thefts. Is that not redemption?
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesIn the case of Tempest, there's also the fact that her Heel–Face Turn was motivated at least as much by the Storm King screwing her over as any "Power of Friendship" type thing. If he had kept his promise, the final battle would have played out quite a bit differently.
And Lily Orchard's comment about Tempest not bothering to see a doctor reminded me of all the fan art of her with some sort of prosthetic horn (one would think Equestria's medical community would have at least some research going on in that area, especially since we've seen fake legs and wings that work well). It would have been hilarious if somepony was starting a clinical trial of one as Tempest was joining up with the Storm King.
Equestria is a little weird about its portrayal of its health care system. Sometimes there are hospitals and modern doctors and prosthetics, and sometimes the go to for medical advice is the witch doctor in the haunted forest. And that is physical health care. If anything ails you mentally, you're basically on your own, unless some regular schmoe goes above and beyond to help you, but nothing professional. Things like the CMC helping people with their jobs or Starlight counselling students seem to be rather recent innovations of pony society.
And Lily is right, that story about that broken horn and Tempest's bitter relationship to magic sounds much more interesting than Yet Another Friendship Scorned. But I think that is a deeper problem, namely that this show has chained itself to the theme of Friendship, and dammit, every episode is going to be about that theme some way or another. And that works fine for a while, but then you start running out of ideas, because there are only so many problems involving friendship, and only so many things friendship can solve, at least on a children's show. So then, to keep things interesting, you get the threat escalation, as Lily describes, where the villains get progressively worse, while the solution remains the same: Friendship.
In that regard, I hope the next show doesn't tie itself so closely to a single theme. It gives the writers more freedom to explore other topics that may be relevant to their audience that are (a little) more complex than "forgive and forget, friends forever" would suggest.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesI'm guessing this is part of the show's issues, where having friendship as the main theme is nice, but it should having something more to compliment it, like family. Though the show doesn't put as much emphasis on family unless it involves someone like Applejack. I've heard some people compare MLP to Sofia the First , another show about a purple princess who's very idealistic, and also covers themes of friendship and family. Though Sofia does better in showing both sides, largely due to Sofia always being around her family and friends, unlike MLP mainly using friendship and sometimes family. I mean, how often would you see Shining Armor of Twilight's parents come to Ponyville, just to give an example?
Edited by jessicadicicco610 on Nov 13th 2020 at 2:24:01 AM
Speaking of witch doctors, the plot to "The Cutie Pox" starts with Zecora cooking up a potion to heal Apple Bloom's chipped tooth, and cooking up another potion with a plant called "Heart's Desire". I can't help but wonder if she could have done anything for Tempest - the potion Zecora made for Apple Bloom basically regrew a missing body part, just much smaller than what Tempest was missing.
There's the problem with doing a "disability acceptance" type Aesop from within speculative fiction.
Sending the message that people with disabilities shouldn't have to wait around to be cured before they can have lives worth living is good.
Insinuating that people with disabilities should have absolutely no preference for being cured over not being cured, or that doctors and scientists shouldn't bother trying to develop cures for things that can't currently be cured? Not so good.
Edited by DoctorWTF on Nov 13th 2020 at 3:16:58 AM

really, the last episode of Friendship is Magic should have been the mane 6 getting sent to prison for all the crimes they committed over the course of the show
Edited by EpicBleye on Nov 13th 2020 at 3:00:19 PM
"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-Mae