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

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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.

     Original OP text 
I don't know WHAT the Hell happened (I blame shenanigans) but we're going to start from scratch. Post your feels for this awesome show again! Naow!

Edited by Mrph1 on Aug 26th 2024 at 10:24:26 AM

JapaneseTeeth Existence Weighed Against Nonbeing from Meinong's jungle Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Mu
Existence Weighed Against Nonbeing
#50551: Feb 18th 2014 at 6:39:09 AM

[up][up][up]I wonder how they'll handle that. So far there's a precedent of the pony in question teaching somepony else, which means that AJ will have to demonstrate or teach honesty to someone. Wonder what kind of situation that might be.

And yeah, the Safari Zone is going to ruin them.

edited 18th Feb '14 6:39:33 AM by JapaneseTeeth

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NESgamer190 Since: Sep, 2012
#50552: Feb 18th 2014 at 6:39:37 AM

I'm awake, and not looking forward to all the snow to deal with.

-looks about, unknowingly wearing a horse-ear headband-

Mio Since: Jan, 2001
#50553: Feb 18th 2014 at 6:41:36 AM

@Japanese Teeth: You know a lot of that stuff just seems to boil down to Depending on the Writer, or Characterization Marches On for Pinkie. No real need to try to reconcile I think.

JapaneseTeeth Existence Weighed Against Nonbeing from Meinong's jungle Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Mu
Existence Weighed Against Nonbeing
#50554: Feb 18th 2014 at 6:46:52 AM

[up]That's also true, but I know from experience that Sereg tends to take a very Watsonian viewpoint. Personally I agree; it's just a case of the writing pushing it a bit too far.

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storyyeller More like giant cherries from Appleloosa Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: RelationshipOutOfBoundsException: 1
More like giant cherries
#50555: Feb 18th 2014 at 6:47:47 AM

On the other hand, people don't always behave the same way in real life, so having different writers actually lends a bit of realism.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
Mio Since: Jan, 2001
#50556: Feb 18th 2014 at 6:50:48 AM

[up]On the other hand people generally expect fictional characters to be more consistent then real people. Sure it may lend a bit of "realism" but that is generally not what people want.

edvedd Darling. from At the boutique, dear. Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: We finish each other's sandwiches
darkabomination Since: Mar, 2012
#50558: Feb 18th 2014 at 6:55:38 AM

Realism in my magical land of talking pretty ponies? surely you jest!

AceOfScarabs I am now a shiny stone~ from Singapore Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
I am now a shiny stone~
#50559: Feb 18th 2014 at 6:57:40 AM

Fiction must be more consistent; Reality doesn't have to make sense until science gets involved :P

Flutterbear

edited 18th Feb '14 7:00:45 AM by AceOfScarabs

The three finest things in life are to splat your enemies, drive them from their turf, and hear their lamentations as their rank falls!
JapaneseTeeth Existence Weighed Against Nonbeing from Meinong's jungle Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Mu
Existence Weighed Against Nonbeing
#50560: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:01:29 AM

I just find it amusing that everybody just accepts stuff like Pinkie being able walk on walls or inflate her head and float away, but if she acts a little more insensitive than usual (in a way that's completely in character), everyone loses their minds. tongue

@Ed: Maybe it'll involve the local pear salesponies. tongue

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AceOfScarabs I am now a shiny stone~ from Singapore Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
I am now a shiny stone~
#50561: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:02:05 AM

@JT:people can accept Pinkie with Toon Powers, but they don't like her being too mean :V

The three finest things in life are to splat your enemies, drive them from their turf, and hear their lamentations as their rank falls!
edvedd Darling. from At the boutique, dear. Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: We finish each other's sandwiches
Darling.
#50562: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:02:10 AM

@Ace: Well, she's been everything else this season. Dragons next perhaps?

edited 18th Feb '14 7:02:57 AM by edvedd

Visit my Tumblr! I may say things. The Bureau Project
KylerThatch literary masochist Since: Jan, 2001
literary masochist
#50563: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:10:13 AM

Realism is "Bob is acting weird because of some extenuating circumstances" not "Bob is acting weird for no (in-universe) reason". That being said, I'm usually willing to allow some tolerance for out-of-universe reasons.

I'm willing to accept all the given explanations for Pinkie's behavior from an in-universe perspective, but I still reserve the right to be displeased with how the scene was written. I dunno. I guess I'm just intolerant of shenanigans when there are feelings getting hurt.

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...
storyyeller More like giant cherries from Appleloosa Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: RelationshipOutOfBoundsException: 1
More like giant cherries
#50564: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:11:20 AM

I guess it's the difference between realism and verisimilitude.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
edvedd Darling. from At the boutique, dear. Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: We finish each other's sandwiches
Darling.
#50565: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:13:29 AM

Today's deep discussion is brought to you by the Pony Thread and Sweet Apple Acres Cider.

Try our new Zap Apple variety today!

Visit my Tumblr! I may say things. The Bureau Project
Mio Since: Jan, 2001
#50566: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:14:14 AM

[up][up]Pretty much.

Doesn't help that people often say the former when they mean the latter.

edited 18th Feb '14 7:14:20 AM by Mio

Sereg Since: Jun, 2010
#50567: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:14:19 AM

sereg's love with his own fanon, again. Which, can be slightly annoying dude. it's just headcanon.
I’m sorry. I didn’t realise that the donkey thing was annoying. I’ll try tone it down.

still, yo've manage to write a somewhat popular series of fics to my zero, so i'll not judge too much.

Not that popular. I only have 102 followers. And the number of faves has a lot of drop-off. Even the first barely has more than 500 faves.

That's the entire point of Pinkie's problem: she's trying to be encouraging and complimentary, but has so little understanding of what stage fright actually feels like that she makes it worse.

I see no evidence of anything of the sort. Who’s using headcanon now?

Kegisak basically hit the nail on the head. From Pinkie's perspective, there's no logical reason for Fluttershy to be scared because 1. Fluttershy is good at what she does and everyone likes it and 2. Fluttershy's already done performing by this point. Fluttershy already performed and succeeded, so Pinkie sees no reason for Fluttershy to be scared. Also, everybody keeps bringing up the "But she knew not to prank Fluttershy!" thing, and I don't think it quite applies. Here's why: Pinkie knows that pranks are basically designed to make somepony else look ridiculous, if only a little bit. As such, she only targets ponies who she knows won't mind looking stupid in front of others, and tries to adjust her pranks to the appropriate ridiculousness level. Pinkie understand that Fluttershy doesn't handle that well, so she avoids pranking her. But here's the key: she only recognizes that Fluttershy reacts badly to negative attention. She knows not to make Fluttershy look bad in front of other ponies, and because pranks generally make the victim look like a bit of a fool. However, in this situation, all the attention Fluttershy has been receiving is positive. Pinkie assumes "Oh hey, everypony loved her! There's no problem here!" and makes a big deal out of it, not realizing that for someone as introverted as Fluttershy whether the attention is positive or negative doesn't matter. Pinkie can grasp that it's not fun to be laughed at, but she doesn't get that some ponies don't like being applauded either. She thinks it's awesome that everyone likes Fluttershy's performance and just doesn't get that to Fluttershy it doesn't matter and she doesn't want to be in the spotlight at all.

Except she explicitly spelled out the problem and was called out on it and made no effort to stop, let alone fix it.

My problem isn't that it makes no sense or that it's Out of Character. It's unfortunately in-character. My problem is that it's the most compelling evidence I have so far for my hypothesis that Pinkie is a horrible pony.

MousaThe14 Writer, Artist, Ignored from Northern Virginia Since: Jan, 2011 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
Writer, Artist, Ignored
#50568: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:19:15 AM

Yosh, how's everypony doin'?

I'm in the middle of watchin' Filli Vanilli right now, I wonder if Applejack and Big Macintosh talk like that all the time or if AJ is just really smart and perceptive or both.

EDIT: AH!

AAAAAHHHH!

HOW IS PINKIE DOING THAT

edited 18th Feb '14 7:19:54 AM by MousaThe14

The Blog The Art
Rinsankajugin Since: Feb, 2012
#50569: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:20:18 AM

Because she's a spider! Spiderpone!

edvedd Darling. from At the boutique, dear. Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: We finish each other's sandwiches
Darling.
#50570: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:21:37 AM

@Mousa: I'd say AJ picked up enough hints to piece things together rapidly.

@Sereg: 'Inconsistently written enough to be occasionally irritating' is about as far as I'm willing to go on that hypothesis.

edited 18th Feb '14 7:24:31 AM by edvedd

Visit my Tumblr! I may say things. The Bureau Project
storyyeller More like giant cherries from Appleloosa Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: RelationshipOutOfBoundsException: 1
More like giant cherries
#50571: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:26:30 AM

Well pony hooves clearly are a bit sticky.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
edvedd Darling. from At the boutique, dear. Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: We finish each other's sandwiches
kegisak Element of Class Since: Feb, 2011 Relationship Status: In Lesbians with you
Element of Class
#50573: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:32:34 AM

@Sereg: I think the problem here is that you aren't recognizing Pinkie's methods. Pinkie's big character introduction was basically to point out that she considers the best way to overcome fears is to laugh them off. I think that's what she's trying to do for Fluttershy - get her to laugh at her fears by playing them up to the point they become silly. This doesn't work, obviously, but because Pinkie doesn't have the emotional connection to Stagefright the way Fluttershy does, she has no way of understanding just what she was doing.

She did try to adjust her approach - by going further. She had no way of knowing that her plan would never work, but it's the only plan she knows. She was only trying to make Fluttershy feel better, she was just... bad at it.

I don't think you can call someone who's well-intentioned, but ignorant a bad person, really. You can try to inform them of the right way, but it's not like anypony stopped to try and explain to Pinkie why joking was a bad idea here. With no conception of Stage fright there was simply no way she was going to figure it out on her own, so while she's certainly not free from the consequences of her actions she's hardly a terrible person for not being able to overcome her own inherent thought process, any more than you're a terrible person for not being able to understand her.

Ignorance isn't the same as malice. Pinkie did a bad thing, but she did it for a good reason, and I think that warrants forgiveness. It simply also warrants like, sensitivity training, maybe.

Birthright: an original web novel about Dragons, the Burdens of Leadership, and Mangoes.
JapaneseTeeth Existence Weighed Against Nonbeing from Meinong's jungle Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Mu
Existence Weighed Against Nonbeing
#50574: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:33:47 AM

@Sereg: We'll have to agree to disagree then, because honestly it's mostly an interpretive issue. It's pretty much well established that Pinkie thinks differently from other ponies, and while it isn't spelled out explicitly, I think Kegisak's summary is a pretty natural conclusion to draw from the information that we're given. We know that Pinkie loves the spotlight and that she has trouble looking at things from other characters' perspectives, so it's a matter of putting two and two together and saying that this is just a particularly extreme case.

But honestly, I think the most logical explanation is simple: The writers needed someone to vocalize Fluttershy's fears for a young audience without much firsthand experience, and sacrificed Pinkie's sensitivity to do so. Not the best way of handling things, but I don't think it's a basis for saying she's a horrible character. She's insensitive, and wasn't written well this episode.

[up]Yeah, if anything my complaint is more that no one ever tried to sit Pinkie down and explain why what she did made Fluttershy miserable. She recognized that she screwed up the first time, and just didn't know how to fix it, and without anyone to explain it to her, she made it worse. If anything, it's the rest of the cast's fault for not pulling Pinkie aside after the first incident and telling her not to do that because it makes Fluttershy uncomfortable. Pinkie's default response to anything painful is to try to defang it by making light of it. And it just doesn't work here.

edited 18th Feb '14 7:37:45 AM by JapaneseTeeth

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Mio Since: Jan, 2001
#50575: Feb 18th 2014 at 7:34:17 AM

@sereg: Well Pinkie has never been one to let other's desires or personal feelings get in the way of what she wants/ having a good time. tongue


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