My Little Pony: Cleanup Is Magic

I brought up how Anti-Climax Boss kept getting used for non-video game works in another thread once, and someone suggested making an audience reaction called Unintentional Anti-Climax, but it never went anywhere.

On this page: YMMV.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 7 E 7 Parental Glideance

• Informed Wrongness: Rainbow Dash is meant to be unappreciative for being angry at her parents who embarrass her by cheering her on all the time. But it's shown their cheering alienated ponies from Rainbow in her childhood and was interfering with her job a present, their showing up at Wonderbolt HQ to cheer unannounced was stated to have risk getting Rainbow in trouble with her superiors, and their shooting fireworks during Rainbow's air show could have resulted in someone getting hurt.

And...

• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Rainbow Dash's parents come off as this to some fans. While Rainbow Dash was wrong to yell at her parents, Bow and Windy play the victim & refuse to take responsibility for their actions.
  • Scootaloo also comes off as this. While her usual admiration of Rainbow Dash as her hero is typically portrayed as heartwarming and adorable, her admiration for Rainbow Dash in this episode comes off as acting like a clingy and obsessive Fangirl who's obsession for Rainbow Dash comes off as uncomfortable and creepy, particularly the scene where she puts a picture of Rainbow Dash's used diaper from when she spoke her first word in her scrap book. Also, the viewers are supposed to sympathize with her after Rainbow Dash lashes out at her parents for their overbearing support. While it's understandable that Scootaloo's family issues makes her wish that she had support from her family like Rainbow Dash does, she doesn't even try to see the conflict from Rainbow Dash's perspective, let alone understand how unhealthy the support Rainbow Dash gets from her parents really is. Not to mention, she actually even joined in on making Rainbow Dash feel uncomfortable from the overbearing support Rainbow Dash was getting from her parents.

I noticed a lot of people sided with Bow and Windy in this because Scootaloo is later revealed to have issues of Parental Neglect, and thus becomes a Woobie, whereas some people argue Dash is lucky to have such supportive parents. Though many do agree keeping a diaper and an apple from when Dash was a foal was a little too much as was the fireworks, so maybe change this to Broken Base? Personally, I'm in the middle. For the longest time I thought Dash didn't talk about her parents because she was an orphan, but them congratulating her of hanging a towel is a bit too overbearing. Honestly, this is a case like Marge and Homer Simpson where they are embarrassing in several ways but not entirely that the sympathy goes away from them.

Edited by Klavice on Mar 2nd 2022 at 3:43:40 AM

I mean, a majority of the people I've heard have sided with Rainbow... So IDK how loud either side actually is.

It's pretty split even. Orphans and people who have abusive parents side with Windy and Bow, whereas people who have similar family situations to Dash, side with Dash.

I mean... I'm not either of those people and I've sided with Dash just because the actions of her parents are extremely overboard and dangerous, and she only yelled at them once. I don't think it has as much to do with family situations as people just looking at how the characters reacted.

Then again, I tend to side with Dash a lot more than the show wants me to, including in episodes like Mare Do-Well and the cheerleading one.

I can put it on the Broken Base cleanup list, if you think it should be a Broken Base instead.

We don't need to send it to the cleanup thread; we can just write a new Broken Base example.

No, the list of topics I compiled for what we're going to keep when I put on my rubber gloves and scrub the accumulated crap out of the recap pages.

Ah, got'cha.

My interest in the show was waning by season 7 — I only got back into it and played catchup last month. Still haven't watched season 9 yet.

I am 100% neutral about this issue, so if other people think it's worth memorializing with a Broken Base entry, I can make it one.

I feel like if there are still enough people who side against Scootaloo and Dash's parents to warrant a Broken Base entry — and I would say there are — then they're also worth noting under Unintentionally Unsympathetic. The episode rather clearly wants them to be seen in the right, so if a non-trivial amount of the fandom thinks that they aren't then they're by definition coming off as less sympathetic than intended.

Agreed, the episode very much wants Dash to be in the wrong, and a lot of fans disagree, me included.

Dash episodes are... weird. She's almost always set up to be the one everyone else needs to correct and teach, but she usually ends up making points some audience members can agree with or at least sympathize with.

Informed Wrongness for RD alone can cover the Parental Glidence issue.

YMMV.My Little Pony The Movie 2017

• Strawman Has a Point: Tempest Shadow's claim that "All this power wasted on parties when there are far greater uses" is meant to be part of her villainous philosophy that gets disproven. However...
  • Tempest's motivation for joining up with the Storm King (getting her broken horn fixed) may point to another "far greater use" for pony power: medical research. If Equestria had put more resources towards that instead of parties, there may have been some meaningful remedy[[note]]Even if one assumes that [[HealingMagicIsTheHardest regeneratove magic would be a no-go]], a prosthetic horn might be worth looking into.[[/note]] available to her younger self. Or for that matter [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS4E5FlightToTheFinish Scootaloo]], or [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS4E19TradeYa Stellar Eclipse]], or [[WebAnimation/Snowdrop2013 Snowdrop]], or what have you.[[note]]"You don't need to be not-disabled to be special" is a fine Aesop in and of itself, but for a society which claims to value friendship, passing off [[InspirationallyDisadvantaged feel-good platitudes]] as a substitute for developing actual solutions is [[CrapsaccharineWorld not a very friendly thing to do]].[[/note]]

It confusing Snowdrop as canon makes me question the analysis. My impression was the disabilities thing was too far removed from the (unintentionally valid) argument which was pertaining to their military. And by the disables angle I question if Tempest's actions (betray your nation to conquest/enslavement to get cured by someone with no reason to expect to be willing or able to honor that arrangement) are past the point of unintended validity.

I've seen a bunch of complaints over the Scootaloo/disabilities issue. I don't necessarily disagree but I question if this is an appropriate place for such or if it's shoehorning in wank to something too far removed from the matter to fit. Thoughts?

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S5 E4 "Bloom & Gloom"

• Shout-Out:
  • It turns out that the antagonist is simply Apple Bloom's shadow voicing all the fear and self doubt she's refusing to face can bring to mind a certain game. Especially when Apple Bloom arguing it is met with it telling her it's done nothing more than what she asked for. It even has a similar vocal distortion as the Shadows.

That example's bothered me for a while. The situation described here is a trope that isn't specific to Persona 4, so it feels like someone interpreting a scene as a reference to an M-rated game to make the show seem more mature than it is^note although another episode did have an unambiguous Metal Gear Solid reference, it was a quick gag, while this is a serious plot moment. The wording "can bring to mind" especially makes this look like a shoehorn since it indicates uncertainty.

Well, that, or the person adding that just saw a similarity and mistook it for a shout-out through Small Reference Pools and Fan Myopia. Basically, when you know a trope mainly from one work, any other work with that trope will seem like a shout out, even when it's not..

In any case, unless you can see anything that would tie that scene to that game specifically, you can cut that.

Edited by Redmess on Mar 10th 2022 at 12:12:11 PM

That's basic Jungian psychology, which there is already a trope for — Shadow Archetype.

That raises the question, is the shadow in the dream really a Shadow Archetype? That is, does the shadow reflect those parts of Apple Bloom's personality she does not like about herself?

Strictly speaking, the shadow is everything a person doesn't recognize about themselves, not just the things they don't like. There's one line at the end of the trope description explaining that, whereas that should probably be part of the actual description.

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)

So yes, it is her shadow. Unless this site is using an unnecessarily-strict and limited definition.

Edited by WarriorsGate on Mar 11th 2022 at 1:31:37 AM

As someone who's cleaned up Shout-Out examples before, especially for MLP, that problem is so damn rampant. (It's like the Boss Baby vibes meme, if you've heard of that.) I don't blame tropers for making these connections, but it's always awkward if the reference is really obviously shoehorned. With MLP in particular these connections are often proped up by defensive bronies to prove that it was more than just a kid's show. I remember back in the early days of the fandom when bronies would go "Look, a Yakety Sax reference! A Big Lebowski reference!"

It's not too far off from the similar problem of shoehorned Nightmare Fuel examples, which MLP has also had.

Edited by harryhenry on Mar 11th 2022 at 11:56:11 PM

I mean, there was absolutely a Lebowski reference on this show, in the 100th episode. An entire scene, in fact, crossed over with a Dr Who reference for good measure.

This may be a kids show, but the creators obviously love making references to other works, sometimes rather risque ones. Remember "Grannies Gone Wild"?

I certainly would not put the writers above making a Persona 4 reference, but in this case, the reference is much too general and not specific enough to the game, which is the real issue with it.

MLP is usually pretty blatant about their shout-outs. This is too vague to ever qualify as intentional.

Yeah, when MLP references another work it's always very obvious. The shadow thing definitely doesn't fit that, it's really just a coincidental kind-of similarity.

To be clear both those references I used as examples are legit, with the Big Lebowski one first turning up in "The Cutie Pox". I was critiquing two problems I've seen when it comes to MLP Shout-Out examples, but mixed them together without clarifying the difference.

How do you mean? It's true that any Genre Savvy observer could easily have predicted that the Storm King would screw Tempest over, but that doesn't change the fact that she believed (however misguided she may have been) that he'd be willing and able to do for her what Equestria's medical community evidently could not. And the fact that it's not related to the matter of military preparedness shouldn't change whether or not it's a valid point regarding "greater uses" for Equestria's resources.

Edited by DoctorWTF on Mar 12th 2022 at 5:36:43 AM