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

The only issue I have in recommending Medaka Box is that it has issues with contradicting its own projected morals and a lot of blatant hypocrisy in regards to what it's trying to say and what it's actually doing, and vice versa.

In what way?

it's been a while since i last read it so i can't cite specific examples, but i remember a lot of times where medaka would say stuff about how wrong the bad guys were, but then did the same stuff they did but she's treated as right. i think i remember it happening pretty annoyingly while they were in the zoo area?

Though my bigger issue with it is the fact that it can't make up its mind if it's subverting common shonen tropes or playing them straight- often times leading to incredibly shoddy writing.

You're definitely right in the fact that those topics are brought up and dealt with nicely.. sometimes.

Like, about a third of the time the manga is written really well and handed nicely, which does make me want to recommend it.

The last two thirds, however, are written either okayish or just written poorly- which is where it holds all the contradictions and keeps me from wanting to recommend it.

edited 15th Jul '16 1:01:37 PM by EpicBleye

Well, it's kind of a plot point that Medaka is too talented to understand ordinary people and her words are therefore suspect. Medaka's better than everyone, but she's not perfect and her very "betterness" robs her of insight. That's part of the deal with her character.

My favourite character and the one I consider most moral is actually Hinokage.

I also feel that a manga should feel free to choose what combination of playing straight and subverting they want to do. There's no combination that's inherently better or worse.

I'm not going to call it a perfect manga. It's not even my favourite, and some arcs are absolutely better than others, but I think it's a lot of fun and gives one an opportunity to think of those issues.

The issue with the combination of subverting/playing straight is that it falls into the very writing pitfalls of shonen manga that it constantly tries to make fun off.

Still, when it's good it's really good and there's no denying that.

edited 15th Jul '16 1:26:26 PM by EpicBleye

@Santos: Nope. We still don't know, and probably never will. I'm just going to assume that she's dead. It's a shame too, since generally the Brony Fandom is really good at helping people who need it {Look up Keyframe's story for proof of that}.

Regarding the talent debate, everyone else already said pretty much everything I was going to. There's just one thing I want to note

Regarding Flight to the Finish, I don't think that was ableism. Diamond Tiara just used whatever she could to sabotage the crusaders. If Scootaloo was a champion flyer, she would have just made fun of something else.

This is kind of funny, sad and awesome all rolled together.

Motion comics aren't used nearly as much as they should.

After following the link to Tall Poppy Syndrome, I ended up learning that The Purge actually got sequels, and those sequels addressed the massive Fridge Logic in the premise. Interesting.

Plural? I thought it was just the one. Huh.

A new one is coming out right around now actually. I've seen the commercials.

edited 15th Jul '16 8:30:54 PM by JapaneseTeeth

While I admit that I've never seen it, that movie's popularity has always confused me. It doesn't look to be anything more than your standard psycho-horror film, just with a little political flavoring and yet there are a people who claim that it has an "important" message and serves as a warning even though the premise is ridiculous. Am I missing something?

I haven't seen them myself, but if I understand correctly: the first one took an interesting premise with a lot of potential (the whole background of The Purge), and wasted it by focusing on a bog-standard home invasion story. The sequels were better by virtue of actually focusing on the more interesting aspects of The Purge itself.

Aaand I've just finished and sent in my chapter of the circular bird. That is definitely the fastest I've ever done.

Well, I haven't seen it myself, but after seeing a bunch of commercials for Election Year(The new one) because of Youtube, I found myself pondering it.

You're right that the premise is absurd, and that kind of got me wondering how it could ever come about. Like, who in their right mind would ever vote for a day without laws? Well, violent people, obviously. Violent people with very poor judgement. Criminals as well, of course, or people who want the thrill of crime.

That's a few different kinds of people, but I think that in the grand scheme of things it represents a relatively small field of people. So if it were a nation-wide referendum, how would it ever get passed? My best guess would be A persistent case of "It couldn't happen to me" - people would vote it in for the benefits it could potentially give them without a thought to the consequences, because most people kind of consider themselves immune to murder or crime until it actually happens to them.

Of course ,that's under the assumption of referendum. If it were, say, parliamentary, then the reason why it gets voted in is obvious: Parliament/Senate is sat upon almost exclusively by rich people, ie. people who can afford very, very good security systems. Therefore, they don't have to consider the consequences, because they can say with 99% certainty that the consequences won't affect them. So it's possible the Purge was enacted through the callousness of the rich and powerful, at the expense of the poor.

So, the moral could either be, "Think about the consequences of your actions and the potential for retaliation", or "Don't trust the rich to hold your best interests at heart", or even(Since the first movie focuses on a rich family forced to protect a vagabond) "Have some compassion for your fellow man, like goddamn".

I mean, I've never seen the things , so I dunno if there's a more clear message in the films themselves. but I can definitely see how the premise, at least, could spook people just because of the sheer aggressive disdain for Modern America it presents. Like, something has to be fucked up for that to happen.

In that case, I can definitely get behind those messages. I just think that a horror film was the wrong medium to present it through. Those kinds of movie attract a different kind audience than what I think they were aiming for.

edited 15th Jul '16 8:13:03 PM by LordVatek

From the comments section here:

Well apparently the whole ting is just enacted by a bunch of shadowy rich assholes as a means of killing off all the one they see as nothing more then pathetic, useless, welfare using pieces of shit to keep them in line. To the point that there really isn't that much wanton murder from regular people. Sure some go nuts, but most just hide out for it. So government murder squads are sent into major cities to make sure there is a high enough body count of 'undesirables'.

edited 15th Jul '16 8:22:17 PM by Seraphem

See? That shit is way more spooky than "Bunch of random joes goin' do a murder".

I always figured the state of affairs we see in the movies(In theory) was a Slippery Slope kinda deal.

Like, in the first purge, maybe a handful of people get killed, and their families are livid but can't do anything about it. Except, ahah, there's another one coming.

So the next year, the families of all those people who got murdered get ready. And of course, they band together because of safety in numbers. And they go out, and they get revenge.

And then those peoples' families get pissed...

And fast forward about a dozen years and you have roving gangs who aren't really getting "revenge" anymore so much as they are waging a small-scale war against nothing in particular, and the casualties are just anyone who gets in their way.

Or like, vigilantes killing anybody out because hey, anyone out during the Purge must be looking to Do a Murder, right?

@Meta: I saw a similar analysis of the concept (I forget where), where the conclusion was basically that the murder rate probably wouldn't rise that much, but that more "practical" crimes like theft, looting, drug deals, prostitution, embezzlement, etc. would all go through the roof.

edited 15th Jul '16 8:34:28 PM by JapaneseTeeth

i don't know about the quality of the actual movies, but i know Rick and Morty did a "The Purge" episode on an alien planet where it was, in fact, the rich politicians that enacted the policy because they didn't have to fear the consequences.

Then thanks to Rick, they did.

Well FUCK. I think I lost my laptop charger when I went to the library yesterday.

Hopefully it'll either be in the lost and found, or you can get a replacement.

Anyway, I'm going to bed now.

I haven't seen the movies, but going my the marketing and what I read on TV Tropes, it seems like the premise was originally just a silly excuse for a horror movie. Then once they realized just how absurd it was, they sort of retconned it into a political conspiracy.