My Little Pony - Generation 5

wrong thread

Edited by Ultimatum on May 18th 2022 at 2:57:26 PM

They do have typewriters, they just look/work differently as expected given they lack fingers.

I don't believe we've seen what, if anything, ponies use for telecommunications besides Spike, whom's methods can't be widespread.

Anyway, this Schizo Tech and inconsistent society levels is evidence we cannot use comparisons to real life time periods as an estimate for how much time has passed in-series. (Note G5 when through a cultural setback beyond RL precedent as in our medieval Dark Age we at least remembered the old civilization existed in some form as opposed to thinking it fictitious.)

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on May 18th 2022 at 10:27:04 AM

I know full well they're using these "outlier data points" to make it relatable. Like how Shining Armor and Cadence are supposedly rulers of the Crystal Empire, yet are also harried middle class parents with no servants.

Yet the show also has wildly outdated anti-industrialization aesops like "Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" and "Canterlot Boutique" that have no bearing on American society past 1900 either.

Our planet is literally suffering the effects of rampant industrialization on an apocalyptic scale as we speak. Past generations let the Flimflam Brothers run amok and now the climate is burning. Children watching this show are growing up into the Flimflam Apocalypse from "The Cutie Re-Mark".

Odd to hear the claim that anti-industrialization messages are somehow outdated.

Edited by TobiasDrake on May 18th 2022 at 10:55:43 AM

You cannot open a chain of stores with handmade dresses. It's not happening. You need to start up an assembly line at some point.

It's simple logistics. Three times as many stores means Rarity has to work three times as much just to keep them all stocked.

Come to think of it, this is exactly what Hasbro did in A New Generation. The film portrays Sunny's My Little Pony toys as handcrafted goods made by her loving father, rather than commodities churned out by a Chinese sweatshop that repeatedly gets Hasbro in hot water for labor violations. Aside from the wonderful moment of self-awareness in "Best Gift Ever", where Flim and Flam's MLP toys are cheap, gimmicky junk, Hasbro's IP continues to romanticize a return to 19th century artisanal craftsmanship despite not living up to that Aesop in the slightest.

And honestly, who wouldn't want to see an episode about Rarity tackling labor violations at her factory? Sounds like a missed opportunity there, Hasbro...

Edited by WarriorsGate on May 18th 2022 at 1:08:21 AM

Don't underestimate just how much was forgotten about the Romans. Yes, people generally knew there used to be this big highly civilized empire, but a lot of it was shrouded in mystery and myth. Part of the Renaissance came from rediscovering a lot about the Roman Empire that had been forgotten, but before that, it was pretty much a lost civilization writ large.

It must have been a thing of wonder, living among these big ancient ruins that people didn't even have a clue about how to build, while knowing so little about their culture.

So yes, the way Argyle talks about G4 as if rediscovering an ancient, forgotten civilization is pretty accurate for the Roman Empire during the Renaissance.

Now that you mention it, yes, it is ridiculous that Cadance and Shining Armor have to fob off their baby on Twilight to babysit when they have an entire kingdom worth of subjects, many of whom would no doubt be delighted to have a job as royal au pair.

Which is probably an indication that the writers did not really think of Cadance as a princess so much as Twilight's sister-in-law. Which also explains why the show barely does anything with Cadance as princess.

Edited by Redmess on May 18th 2022 at 10:44:40 AM

x3 I wouldn't say outdated necessarily. More like the conversation has shifted to anti-technology/modernization groups, since the way to beat climate change is to make more energy efficient technology. However, there's a lot of fear mongering going around on how to implement them.

With all the advancement that has taken place, I wouldn't be surprised if the show tackled ludditism, it is pretty topical considering you have a good chunk of people opposed to things like GMO, 5G, vaccines, etc.

Edited by Afrovenator on May 18th 2022 at 8:31:34 AM

The John Henry myth that forms the basis of "Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" is wildly outdated, though.

It's a fairy tale, not an legitimate Aesop for 2022.

If somebody tries founding a worldwide shipping business that relies on horse-drawn carriages and sailing ships, they will get destroyed. You can't "undo" a paradigm shift like that and still hope to meet demand in the long run. At most, you can become an insular cult like the Amish who retreat into their own little corner of the world, shunning the outside and relying on strict religious orthodoxy to bind them together.

And even they use pesticides and GMOs.

Edited by WarriorsGate on May 18th 2022 at 7:39:49 AM

Don't underestimate just how much was forgotten about the Romans. Yes, people generally knew there used to be this big highly civilized empire, but a lot of it was shrouded in mystery and myth. Part of the Renaissance came from rediscovering a lot about the Roman Empire that had been forgotten, but before that, it was pretty much a lost civilization writ large.

Maybe the average peasant didn't know much about them, but society as a whole did not forget. The entire reason we have so much writing from the ancient Romans (and Greeks) is that scholars painstakingly copied it and recopied it down the centuries.

It's also worth remembering that you're talking specifically about Europe. The Roman empire survived in the east all the way to 1453!

Edited by storyyeller on May 18th 2022 at 11:03:43 AM

I always get annoyed by how people treat Schizo Tech as unrealistic. Technology is NOT a straight line. Even IRL, different cultures developed technology at different rates and in different orders. The idea that another world, ESPECIALLY a fantasy world with magic that changes what is needed by and can be achieved by technology, ESPECIALLY one where the dominant species aren't even of humanoid shape, would develop technology at the same speed and in the same order as Western Europe (which itself got a lot of its technology by copying it from other cultures) is ridiculous.

Yes, I was talking about Europe specifically. And a lot of those texts were preserved in the Middle East, but not in Europe. Rediscovering them was a major part of kickstarting the Renaissance in Europe.

And while the Roman Empire technically survived until 1500, I don't think the average European would have counted that. They considered the Roman Empire very much fallen, even if it technically continued in the East as the Byzantine empire.

And no, I don't think Super Speedy Cider Squeezy was intended as a serious economic aesop. That really is reading too much into it.

Edited by Redmess on May 18th 2022 at 7:44:23 PM

I'm not sure if it's possible to read too much into things that are literally meant to be moral instructions, and explicitly didactic by nature. Especially when they're just copied and pasted from a real-life folk tale dreamt up by a bunch of railroad workers who were probably just bitter their jobs got taken away by machines.

Also, the episodes own YMMV page says this under Unconventional Learning Experience:

Yes, their technology clearly works, and tastes better than what the Apples produce. Ponies just turned against them because they didn't put any "TLC" into it. All Flim & Flam need to do is not cut corners the next town over, and their industrialized cider production will spread like wildfire and put the Apples out of business in ten years. The happy ending of the episode relies on every single pony in town keeping up their moral obligation to support the Apples for the rest of their lives, despite the Apples obviously being unable to meet demand.

I get that the "support mom'n'pop shops" Aesop is common in kid's films/shows. But when America's supply chain collapsed two years ago and people ran out of toilet paper, things got nasty quick, so that Aesop doesn't really translate to reality — which means it has failed as an Aesop.

Edited by WarriorsGate on May 19th 2022 at 3:42:30 AM

I mean the explicit message was "cutting corners never works" as muddled at that moral is by the fact that the Flim Flams DIDN'T cut corners to start with.

Ironically, the Flim Flams would go on to continually have decent-to-good business ideas, only to basically scuttle them singlehandedly with their Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat mentality.

Really, these two could be legitimate wealthy businessmen by now if they just stopped insisting on conning people.

Key word there is "worldwide". Applejack isn't trying to run a worldwide cider-manufacturing megacorporation. You're right that it's not possible to become the next Google or Amazon or Pepsicola without turning into a monstrous, cruel machine that tramples human rights, cuts every corner in the name of infinitely increasing profits, and regularly campaigns against civil liberties to protect their inhumane methods of production.

But. Like. Maybe that's a problem, and not just "The way things are". I don't think "Life sucks, everyone's a ruthless bastard, so fucking learn to deal with it!" would be a great moral.

In the episode itself, AJ doesn't meet demand. The argument is made within the episode itself that ultimately, it's not possible for her to compete with automation when it comes to sheer output. Even with her friends working with her, the machine still wins. Beating it in quantity simply can't be done.

But the Flimflam Brothers have to cut so many corners to win that the quality of their product plummets as a result. They started out producing cider that was just as good as AJ's, but by the end of the contest, their swill is undrinkable. The ruthless capitalists don't really give a fuck what goes in their drink so long as people will buy it.

The quality of a product spiraling downwards after capitalists get their hands on it is something most Americans will experience at some point in their lives eventually. Buying a company and then turning its products into cheaply-produced garbage is a common occurrence in the American economy. What the Flimflam Brothers did to Apple family cider just to win a bet has happened to all of us at one time or another.

Capitalism inevitably ruins everything it touches in the name of efficiency.

It's not outdated when it's one of the major cultural problems that the children watching the show will inherit as they grow up. It's easy to celebrate, for example, Disney buying Fox and getting one step closer to an entertainment monopoly. But maybe that's a bad thing in the long run.

Edited by TobiasDrake on May 19th 2022 at 6:26:27 AM

&That it came down to "greed is bad" as opposed to these technological/economic issues shows the workAesop never actually had the nuance or complexity we're projecting into it. But that it was good enough to support such projecting is likely why FIM was as good as it was.

But maybe that, and why Cadance couldn't get a babysitter and lack of role/purpose as a princess, is better suited for the G4 thread.

Actually, that's a little more complicated than "capitalism turns good food bad for profit".

The main reason this happens (albeit to a less extreme degree as this one) is because of economies of scale, speed, and ease to learn.

The main reason the burgers and fries at Mc Donald's are so-so at best is very simple: the business model is to provide food at a low price that is made quickly and ready to go. That means making some concessions to that amazing burger recipe your grandma makes that takes an hour to make, both so it can be made faster (keeping the price down and turnaround fast), and, most importantly, so that the recipe is easy to learn for anyone they will hire. Your gran's recipe would require a pretty good cook, which is expensive and relatively rare, but your international fast food chain needs a lot of cooks to make a lot of burgers, so they stick with the simple recipe that will produce decent burgers quickly.

Oh, and the other reason the burger recipe is simpler is so that every burger has the same quality, so that customers always know what to expect. They don't have to be great, as long as they are all good.

That's not capitalism, it's a concession to scale.

This is incidentally what Rarity's arc about opening new boutiques is also touching on. If you want to run a boutique chain, you can't design and sow everything on your own, and if you want to outsource it, you'll have to make some concessions for employees who aren't quite as skilled as you are. What's more, once you start mass producing, customers start expecting a certain amount of predictability from your product. They don't really want something that is absolutely unique, they'll want something that's as good as the other person buying the same thing (rather like how people expect their burger to taste as good as the last person's).

Is this bad? Well, it depends on what you want. If you just want a decent burger, or a nice set of clothes, you'll likely settle for Mc Donald's or a national chain store. Most people, most of the time, are not looking for haute cuisine or couture: they just want something reasonably nice and not too expensive.

For the benefit of non-Americans, "Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" was based on the American folk tale of John Henry. Henry was a "steel-driving man" who broke rocks with a hammer to clear the way for railroad tracks. He pitted his strength against a primitive steam-powered jackhammer and won, only to die of a heart attack right after. Ever since, he's been celebrated as a symbol of human perseverance against industrialization (even though railroads are pretty industrial in their own right, but whatever).

However — spoiler alert — the jackhammer won.

Industrial technology has rendered John Henry's job utterly useless. By extension, anything which evokes the myth (such as "SSCS6K") has to carry the baggage that it turned out to be completely wrong.

Your argument falls flat because using a piece of technology doesn't require ideological spiritual power. Even if scummy companies invent something, it's just a tool. "SSCS6K" advocates a return to agrarian primitivism. The Apples claim they need money to make it through the winter, but instead of embracing more efficient technology they trash it and shout, "lol nope, hard work!" leaving them no better off. Even if you say the deal Flim & Flam offered was unfair (which it was) it's still in the Apples' best interests to replicate the technology themselves, or find somebody who can and will offer them a better deal.

Though I'm not really a fan of overt moralizing in children's cartoons, teaching children that elbow grease cannot compete with cutting-edge industrial power is objectively a better lesson than regurgitating 19th century folk tales about jobs that have been utterly replaced by machines.

And, before anybody says anything: I know Status Quo Is God. I know John Henry is an appealing myth. I know all the real-world factors that went into making this episode turn out the way it did. I enjoy it just fine, even though its Aesop has zero relevance to the United States past the year 1900. I am perfectly capable of controlling my emotions and analyzing the flaws in a screenplay without having a grudge against it like it killed my dog.

Edited by WarriorsGate on May 19th 2022 at 2:12:29 AM

Tell Your Tale - IT'S T.U.E.S. DAY

Tell Your Tale - Sunny Day Dinners

This is a show about cartoon ponies.

I swear to god, I don't think the writers room were tossing episode pitches around and telling Lauren Faust "Hey, you know what would be good? An episode about how anarcho-primitivism is amazing and machines suck!" like...this is thinking about the episode on levels the writers clearly were not focused on.

The last few pages have basically been this.

I’m hardly the person who advocates not taking children’s media seriously, but I think Diana’s right. I do think if we’ve gotten to the point where we’re deriding an episode for anarchy-primitivism (I think a more charitable read on the episode would be “the quick and easy way isn’t always the right way”), we’ve gotten pretty damn far up our collective ass.

Honestly, this is starting to verge into “Turning Red doesn’t talk about 9/11 territory”.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on May 19th 2022 at 7:32:12 AM

Interesting that they’d be using a TV show to convey that message.

Don't you know that Twilight's Kingdom is an allegory for pandemics? Tirek is obviously a virus, Discord is a person who doesn't take the virus seriously and allows it to spread, and Rainbow Power are vaccines. It fits, I promise!

Edited by Afrovenator on May 19th 2022 at 7:42:50 AM

And I'm hardly one to say "it's just a cartoon" in the face of valid criticism. There's some genuine issues with some episodes, some bad implications that the writers obviously didn't think of.

But this...this ain't it, chief. This is hyperfixation to the extreme.