Hello and again welcome to your weekly dose of 'えー？': 'This Week on the Plounge' wherein I inform you, the fine folks of the mane sub, what's been going on at your favourite sister subreddit, the Plounge, this past week.
Wait, what is this Plounge you speak of?
The Plounge, or more formally the MLP Lounge is /r/mylittlepony's sister subreddit. Designed to be a place where you can free of the tyranny of rules 3 and 4. A chill place for bronies or anyone to talk in a SFW chat centric environment. It can be found over at /r/MLPLounge. (most of us browse by /new though). Oh and BPM is nice to have. Even if you're allergic to using emotes yourself you'll miss a lot of extra context without it.
What some casual conversation with a sprinkling of ponies? Come over to this introductions thread and meet some people. Don't worry there's also a topic so it ain't just "hi!" "hi" awkward silence.
News
Regulars
Music Threads, from A through to Z. The plan is two a week but hey we'll see what happens. Hosted by Kody02, local music liker.
Sprankton is doing a classic Plounge thing, a Pokemon playthrough told via screenshots and captions. You can suggest nicknames for pokemans even, wow audience participation!
Local movie buff OldMan frequently posts movie reviews. They're good, he knows his stuff.
Top Posts
The top 5 link and self posts, for your browsing content.
Self Posts
Links
Highlights
(manually selected rather than just by score)
Which is a shame, As I used to love it. watching new episodes brought me joy and made me smile. My life sucked and it cheered me up. I bought toys, comics and the odd poster. Never went overboard with an insane collection. I enjoyed brony remixes too.
Then things got in the way in life, and I lost time to watch new episodes. New episodes became new series, then before I knew it I was three seasons behind schedule.
I watched season 5 and 6 recently, and while I enjoyed it, it didn't seem as enjoyable as I recall seasons 1-4. (Or maybe, it just wasn't as enjoyable as I felt watching seasons 1-4).
Now, new episodes have become background noise for me when I watch them, and coupled with all the movies, new online only clips, etc. It feels over saturated and I almost can't be bothered to keep watching as there's a lot to catch up on, for a show I'm not sure I enjoy now (but don't really know why).
Has anyone else felt like this? Is it due to a decline in quality, or has the quality stayed the same and I just moved past it?
I'm going to keep watching gradually, to at least see it to the end and hope it reignites that spark i once felt, but I'm not sure it'll happen.
Does anyone else feel the same, or am I just an oddball?
There's still a year or two before it comes out. They might not have even started animating yet, and a lot tends to change in the early concepts of TV shows.
For instance, just look at some of the early concepts of FIM. It was more adventure-focused, episodes were eleven minutes instead of twenty-two minutes, Zecora had a bigger role, most of the characters had different names and designs, Celestia was a queen instead of a princess, Rarity was the element of Inspiration instead of Generosity, Apple Bloom was alone in her search for a cutie mark (meaning no Scootaloo or Sweetie Belle), Pinkie Pie was a pegasus, Fluttershy was an earth pony, and Trixie was a guy.
This is the thread for discussing anything pertaining to Fanfiction in general. Like your ideas, thoughts, what you're reading, etc. This differs from my Fanfic Recommendation Link-Swap Thread, as that focuses primarily on recommendations. Every week these two threads will be posted at alternate times.
Although, if you like, you can talk about fics you don't necessarily recommend but found entertaining.
IMPORTANT NOTE. Thanks to /u/BookHorseBot (many thanks to their creator, /u/BitzLeon), you can now use the aforementioned bot to easily post the name, description, views, rating, tags, and a bunch of other information about a fic hosted on Fimfiction.net. All you need to do is include "{NAME OF STORY}" in your comment (without quotes), and the bot will look up the story and respond to your comment with the info. It makes sharing stories really convenient. You can even lookup multiple stories at once.
This is a weekly event coinciding (mostly) with NPT; off-topic and meta threads will be staggered so this week's off-topic thread is being submitted now and the meta thread was posted 12 hours ago. Next NPT will be the opposite! We do not ask that all off-topic discussion be kept to this submission; it is merely here as a courtesy and you are free to continue off-topic discussion in the comments of other submissions (off-topic submissions, however, are still a no-no). Would you rather be stranded on an island alone or with someone you absolutely hate? Why? Have fun!
This is a short story told to me by a sheriff's deputy when he came to the yard I was working on at the time, about an impressive equine. (Story was told to me about a year ago so it's coming from memory).
The deputy was on patrol and a call came in about a loose horse spotted on a road, fully tacked up but without a rider. The deputy arrives on scene with his partner and the horse approaches him, unsure of what to do he asked his partner what he should do, he suggested getting on it. Upon mounting up the horse began making it's way back up the trail that lead to the road, the deputy let it go and his partner followed in the patrol car. After a while the horse arrives where his rider, an elderly gentleman was incapacitated with a broken hip, unable to get up.
This horse had upon losing their rider left their side and gone to get help and then lead them straight back to where they'd fallen. The old man told the deputy that he rides out and cares for everyday this horse and it goes to show, if you take good care of your horse, then they just might take good care of you in your time of need.
(I cannot recall what state the deputy was from but this was his motivation for going on a trail ride when he and his family came to Europe on their holidays)
A quick update just to say that we are now officially removing rule 5, which was introduced shortly after the major leaks before the end of season 8.
The rule was implemented to take the incredibly spoiler heavy material and exclude it from this subreddit. Now that season 8 is concluded and official confirmations are now starting to appear for the other elements of the leak, we are no longer going to ban that content.
From now on, discussion of G5 will be treated the same as any other spoiler material. Threads and comments must be tagged and speculation may also include discussion of the elements that featured in the leaked material.
I don't think it's an accident that our beautiful little technicolor ponies blew up in popularity the way they did. Some of it was a sheer skill of the storytelling and animation, of course - let not anything I say here speak against the effort and heart the staff put into making this show what it is. Yet, with the concluding episode of Friendship is Magic - Episode Two Hundred and Twenty One of our magical little ponies - I would draw attention to another aspect of the era they were born into:
The world of self-expression.
The seed of this essay/rant came from /u/psychomotorboat, who I must thank again for a mind-blowingly comprehensive response to a thread I posted about a month ago. They mentioned that 4chan and Tumblr's problems represented "two sides of the same coin ... a lack of willingness to compromise on fantasy desires when faced with reality". More recently, /u/Exploding_Antelope mentioned that they thought the 2010s would be 'the decade of cartoons'.
That got me thinking about timeframes and locations. I started crafting this as a journey back through the environment that nurtured this fandom.
The year is 2010. Tumblr is in ascendance as a blogging platform. Rage comics allow people to distill experiences down and share them using a handful of easily-comprehended faces. Minecraft presents worlds to reshape as players see fit, from castles to functioning logic-processors. Facebook - opened 4 years earlier - continues its meteoric rise as a place for people to present their lives. Even 4chan caters to an environment where users may feel free to express themselves without shame, curtained by the mask of anonymity.
And on 4chan's /co/ board, someone - an anonymous hero, lost to the site's nature and the mists of time - posts a link to an article decrying 'the death of creator-driven animation'. The article expresses disgust with a new cartoon captained by animation veteran Lauren Faust for the next generation of the venerable My Little Pony brand; anger, that such a proud figure would 'sell out' to the corporate monolith. Although the new show had been periodically discussed on /co/ before, for the first time it receives significant attention. Yet when so many experimentally viewed the resulting cartoon - perhaps expecting something cringy and pablum-sweet - they instead find a rich world populated by vibrant characters and intelligent writing. Overnight, Friendship is Magic erupts onto the internet.
I argue this is no accident.
As I mentioned, 2010 was also a year already fertile in themes of self-expression. Into this environment, Friendship is Magic was a catalyst. An ignition point. The fuel was already laid; was it any surprise than an explosion of creativity would ensue?
But what made FiM so catalytic? I would say that the show, in many ways, reflected this culture of self-expression. I cannot say if Lauren Faust, Rob Renzetti, and all the others recognized societal trends or if they merely coincided at a fortuitous time. But I can say that Equestria we saw tapped the currents of self-expression in just the right places:
While the central character is an 'elite' - the chosen student of the nation's goddess-ruler - those who end up accompanying her are "nobodies": Everyday townsfolk. They were archetypes, yes, but archetypes we could recognize. And, by implication, possibly be ourselves.
If Faust's imagination inspired the more fantastic elements of the series, the more mundane 'lessons' didn't hurt either. They tapped viewers' familiarity with things they understood in their own lives - touching the sense that let them say "hey, I recognize that. That's me. THAT'S ME!"
Even the world and lore was steeped in themes of self-expression: The concept of cutie marks as portraying something deeply relevant or personal to the ponies who bore them, whether absolutely literal (Applejack) or more metaphorical (Rarity).
The fuel was rich, the match was struck, and now an explosion of self-creativity was ignited. The internet convulsed in a paroxysm of fan-hype. The age of the pony was begun.
Amid this, the element of self-expression remained strong: A thunderous roar of fan songs. A blinding storm of fan-art. A tsunami of horse-words, telling the stories that their writers wished to tell. The (in)famous pony creator let everyone have their own custom pony - an easy way to self-present while declaring your love for the fandom. I've spoken before about how this fandom was uniquely accepting of fan-work: The spotlight was on the community and its works as often as the official content, and this was no different.
This, again, was not a coincidence. 2010-2012 was also, I think, the peak of a wave in what I think of as optimist self-expression - the idea that not only was it okay to put yourself out there, but that presenting yourself was a worthy end in and of itself. It is no mistake that 4chan, tumblr, and Cheezburger were among the first websites strongly 'colonized' by the fandom, shortly thereafter joined by this subreddit and assorted Facebook groups. These were all websites that have a strongly self-expressive strain to them.
That's not to say that the fandom was totally accepting of self-expression. Original Characters were one point where the fandom was originally remarkably intolerant of self-expression. Transitioning from the common perspective being "oh no, the dreaded OC" to "Hey, that's cool. As long as they're not a horribly-written self-insert." took time. I have to admit, on a personal note, that this is one manner in which I think the fandom aged well.
Yet in direct (and somewhat strange) contrast, reinterpretations of characters (even background ones) were not only acceptable but lauded. Amid my old notes, I have indication that in late 2011 I was counting no less than fourteen separate active blogs featuring varying versions of Octavia Melody (now, sadly, most lost to time and/or the Tumblr purge). It's easy to argue that these were eaten up simply because of the "more pony!" factor, but I think they were begun because the emotional tides of the moment strongly favored sucking it up and putting your thoughts - your ideas - out there.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end.
In retrospect, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. The internet has gone through moments of hyper-self expression before (anyone remember the old Tripod and Angelfire sites?), and temporary immunity does not grant permanent resistance to the rest of the world. Friendship is Magic gave us a temporary away - a brief sheltered cove within which we were all welcome among each other.
But fantasies do not last.
Ponydom did not exist in a vacuum, and as our fandom headed for more troubled times things were changing outside as well. Tumblr and 4chan - two pillars of the fandom - were sliding in mutually opposed, but parallel directions. Both embraced a kind of self-expression exaggerated into delusion, a sense that not only were you entitled to your voice but that if someone disagreed with you then your they were at best mistaken, at worst part of some grand and overarching malevolent force.
In a million other places, the fantasy broke as well: Electronic surveillance controversies put a dark twist on the idea of putting yourself freely out there, while the first rumbles of discontent over big-data harvesting began to rise. Socially, it became widely acceptable to categorize those you disagreed with into negative categories - "hater", "misogynist", "SJW" - as a form of attack. Even utterly benign terms - "gamer" - took on an epithet meaning. At the same time we also gained a burgeoning awareness that unrestrained self-expression could be, well... a little cringy.
Not all of these factors were directly tied to Friendship is Magic or its fandom. Some were, of course - we received many brutal reminds that the show was in the end a toy commercial, and in a roundabout way the original article's prediction of "the end of creator-driven animation" came true for ponies at least. We saw our self-expressive idols fall.
But I do think the fandom - even aside from those portions on 4chan or tumblr - were influenced by the overall changing mood. The unambiguous spirit of wholehearted expression which the fandom thrived on faltered. Rather than distance itself, however, the fandom did something interesting: We continued to embrace self-expression, albeit in a more circumscribed manner. Derpibooru and Fimfiction, tumblr, 4chan, and Reddit continued to host places for people to express themselves. In some ways we even became more expressive - see my comments on OCs above.
I do not think that it was an accident that Friendship is Magic exploded the way it did... nor do I think it is an accident that none of the 'successor cartoons' - Gumball, Korra, Gravity Falls, Steven Universe - had the same influence. Though I haven't viewed any of those but Korra, I would say it's at least in good part not their fault. Friendship is Magic simply landed at the right time, tapped the enthusiasm for self-expression in just the right way.
As we now turn towards the end of G4 and the first official signs of G5 on the horizon, I must admit that I do not think another generation of pony will manage the same degree of tapping those emotional currents. It will not induce the same paroxysm of frantic fan work. Even our fandom now more directly resembles a 'conventional' fandom.
Much like the other successor cartoons, it isn't necessarily the fault of the show itself. It may be a perfectly good cartoon, and appeal deeply to us fans. Also as like with G4 above, let these points I'm making not speak against the skill of the staff who did their hard work on the show.
The simple fact is, the world is changed. The internet now regards self-expression with a kind of guarded reserve. Even pressing the same emotional buttons that Friendship is Magic did will not have the same effect. By skill at reading emotional tides or simple fortuitous timing, FiM landed at just the perfect moment.
And in the end, all I can do is look back and smile in fondness at the days when we were so innocent.
So this is something that I began wondering while watching Flutter Brutter yesterday. Just what musical style/genre suits each of the Mane 6's voices?
Applejack obviously would do great in Country, Folk, and Rockabilly.
Rainbow Dash would be phenomenal in Rock, Pop Rock, Punk, Punk Rock, and Pop Punk I think.
I can see Fluttershy being part of a Quartet or as the lead singer in a Symphonic Metal band.
Rarity would be broadway of course.
Pinkie Pie would be some pop and rap.
And Twily here would be best suited for Pop Rock I feel.
Same thing with Sunny here with perhaps some rock and punk thrown in.
I think that Trixie and Starlight might do great in some Emo/Goth Rock personally. Maybe some Pop Rock and Rock as well?
What would the rest of y'all think their singing voices would be best suited for? Or hell what they would be most interested in?
Before I got into the show, I had a document where I planned to review and critique "girly" media and pick apart my feelings toward them.
This is going to be difficult, but I'm going to introduce the next example of girly media in the least pansy sounding way I can. This means I'll have to avoid the title of the cartoon completely, because it could hardly sound worse.
My little Pony. It's all over my Reddit history and youtube history. I tried to hold it back. I tried to fight it. It won.
Next, I tried to distance myself from the fandom, before emphasizing that what I enjoyed about the show was its subversive nature, which is true, but as I'll get to later, it was hardly the whole story.
There are a number of people, mostly little girls and internet geeks, who enjoy the show and sure, some amount between a fraction and a majority may like it for the love and tolerance and magic and friendship, but for me? Fuck that.
There's a robot chicken parody of care bears in which they have the care bears commit genocide, which is cool, because it's really fun to see childishly innocent and pure things get corrupted. But that's just a robot chicken parody, anybody can write these sorts of characters as dark and edgy and evil, outside of canon.
But what if there were a version of care bears (and btw, care bears is only an analogy for the show I'm referring to) that was a straight, honest installment to its franchise, but at the same corrupts the characters and setting and repeatedly mocks or fixes the pet peeve cliches of its genre. It wouldn't be as self aware as Shrek is to fairy tales, or even as Scream is for slasher movies, but it would beat up the characters with the slapstick of non-wimpy cartoons and repeatedly make some characters lose their mind or otherwise corrupt their innocence one way or another.
In the show I'm talking about, the characters can't take for granted that they're in an idealistic sugar bowl without risk of tempting fate. A character fantasizes about falling in love with a prince at a ball? How big a self-centered ass can the writers make him turn out to be? A character tries to solve a feud by singing some sappy song about sharing that would makes me want to punch puppies? Those feuding agree with me and the song just makes them go back to war. A character wonders openly what kind of cute, fuzzy, adorable little animal she just woke up-SNAKES! Then bats, then a beehive drops on her head.
I am going to say this in the most sappy way possible;
Friendship is magic. By that I mean . . .
I went my whole life hating musical numbers, and felt like my feelings were made out to be nonsensical. "How could you not like them, they're so positive and happy. That's why I started my review of "girly" media.
Then My Little Pony came along:
Pinkie: When I was a little filly and the sun was going doooowwwnn
Twilight: Tell me she's not . . .
Pinkie: *The darkness and the shadows, they would always make me frooowwwwn.
Rarity: She is.
When the show had moments like that, it was like a reassurance from the "other side". It was like a friend, or someone I honestly kind of looked at like an enemy, sitting down with me with a wink and a smile and saying "Hey. I get it. It's okay to hate musical numbers. I know they're kind of ridiculous. I get you. It's okay to be critical." My Little Pony of all things, for all its association with New Sincerity and optimism, sends a message alongside it all that it's okay to be cynical.
That particular message has repeated through the series from vindicating Twilight in Canterlot Wedding to Pharynx in To Change a Changeling.
Continuing my old essay;
What it lacks in intensity and darkness it makes up for in that the corruption involves sincere, played straight sugar bowl characters and is not a pure parody. This makes me curious to get to know the characters in ways I don't usually. When was the last time I wondered what sort of fiction is written inside a cartoon universe? I wondered here, and other than the references to fairy tales in one episode, they have their version of Indiana Jones, James Bond, The Terminator, ninja movies and (presumably Romero-style) zombie movies as well as all the universal horror films from The Wolf Man to Bride of Frankenstein. One background character dressed as the devil in their version of Halloween, which raises an interesting question. This world is home to many monsters of Greek myth as reality, does that mean christian concepts like Satan are classic mythology in this world? This universe doesn't have gods, instead the characters in the show manipulate the sun, moon, seasons, etc.)
I think here we get a glimpse of why there's so much fan content of the show. The show just came along blew everyone's expectations out of the water to the point that inspired their imagination. "There are more things in the world of Equestria than can be imagined in your philosophy." It said. "Look deeper." It said. "OPEN UP YOUR EEEEYYYYYYEEES." And then we were all caged at the show's command.
I enjoy this show the way I enjoy horror movies; I sit through a lot of average material that I don't really mind for the gems in the ruff. For horror movies, I watch a lot of average and alright movies for the 15% of horror films I REALLY like. For this show, I sit through the alright and surprisingly tolerable episodes for the moments where I stop and go-Hey! Trainspotting reference! And that there looked like a reference to a Twilight Zone episode but I don't know if it's on purpose! Hey, that moment was funny, or that backstory was surprisingly interesting, or that's a cool monster. Such moments happen almost every other episode.
I think I sold the show short in this paragraph. I don't enjoy horror movies nearly as much as I do MLP. And I certainly don't care about the stock human cast of a horror film as much as I do the mane 6.
I don't think I was trying to short change the show at the time though. Firstly, when I first got into the show I binged it like a fun-size bag of Cheetos. My actual first experience of it was a blur of animation an intangible feelings. The gems I describe stood out to me in my memory and was easier to describe than the simple sense of enjoyment and curiosity I got watching an episode unfold.
And perhaps moreso, I think I was just caught up in the initial novelty of the show . . . Speaking of which . . .
*But really, the reason I enjoy this show is ironically because I'm so damn cynical about shows like this. I think "shows like these are filled with characters that are such over-the-top sweetness and purity they would probably oppose Halloween like a fundamentalist christian." And then I hear this show has a Halloween episode and go "Really? I've got to see how this goes."
And my unwavering cynicism that never learns continues to be part of why I enjoy it. I see the title "Sisterhooves Social" or "A Wedding in Canterlot" and no lesson learned from the show's previous surprises I go "Damn, that sounds so boring and girly, I've no idea why I'm even giving it a chance." and than one's title refers to an athletics competition and the other gets overrun by rampaging hell-horse looking changelings.*
The phrasing of this part implies I care the least bit about athletics competitions. This would be misleading.
*And I go "Not bad at all, I'll see what the next episode is." *
That was my reaction to Canterlot Wedding. I remember I was in a bad mood before watching it because my computer had crashed, costing a passion project I was working on. I almost didn't watch A Canterlot Wedding until I looked up the first sentence of the TVtropes recap of part 2.
Me: I'm not sure I'm up for watching it.
TVtropes: Twilight wakes up alone in a dark room-
Me: -Okay, I'm intrigued . . . .
I remember Queen Chrysalis reminded me of Vexus from My Life as a Teenage Robot.
I wrote of season 2
*In fact for a good portion of the run of the last season I was on the verge of no longer watching, just barely continuing to watch each consecutive episode. Sometimes the plot summary looked interesting, sometimes the episode was disappointing, But I'd always end up finding a reason to check out the next one *
The show was still growing on me during season two. I remember the episode Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 was the first time I listened to a musical number instead of skipping it, followed by listening to The Perfect Stallion in Hearts and Hooves Day.
Despite my initial reaction, by the time season 3 was upcoming I had binge-watched the show again and was hyped up for more.
*There's something a bit Disney-esque going on here actually. For all the disdain I'd give the girly Disney princess movies, I'd only ever leave the room to avoid the songs and always come back in as soon as the number was over. This show has songs to, but if you excluded the theme song and ran 90 minutes of this show and a Disney musical, this would have fewer musical numbers).I'd always watch, if only with the excuse that I would find it interesting to mock and dissect what I dislike about the movie (as I did with Snow White), and that's excuse I use to watch the girlier episodes of the show. It's a show that exists with Disney movies In a careful balance; anything much girlier than this I wouldn't watch because it would be too intolerable, but Disney princess movies and this show have girliness but mostly in comfortable, balanced out quantities, so that you can digest it (and mock it) at your leisure without it being overkill.
*It's not as good as Disney movies though. I'd compare it to another show but it's hard to find a good comparison; it's closest to a mix between My Life As A Teenage Robot and the average episodes of As Told By Ginger and Hey Arnold, while not, in my opinion, as emotionally exciting as the peaks of any of those. Usually. *
I like My Little Pony better than all the things I just compared it to in this above paragraph.
Last time I tried to watch Beauty And The Beast on my own, without excuse of wanting to review it or of watching it with someone else, and ignoring everything I considered "girly" . . . I just didn't connect to it very much. Maybe I've seen the movie too many times. Maybe the characters just don't interest me. But there was no spark.
And there gives away the lie in this old essay I wrote. 'Cause Disney does have its darker elements, its creepy castle, its sea witch being impaled in the stomach, it's poisoned apple and spooky forests. But all those elements mean nothing if I don't feel good watching the whole thing.
One time I left a youtube comment that if Barbie movies had mental breakdowns and a bee's nest falling on Barbie's head, I'd watch them to.
Would I though? Sure, I'd probably look up the specific scenes on youtube where these things happened, but if the rest of those movies didn't connect to me, the interesting moments would really have to be super interesting to get me to stick around.
As for "girliness", this show, and the fandom, have made me re-think "girly" things.
It's not whether something has rainbows and princesses that makes it cringe-inducing, but what it lacks. It's all in execution and substance.
Then there's specific topic like make-up and fashion. Where I used to think of them as inherently conformist and done for insecurity and for the appeasement of others, it's actually a fanfic about Rarity that started thinking about how it can be meant as a legitimate form of self-expression, about wanting to bring out one's own beauty rather than seeing oneself as ugly.
My perception of romance changed too, thanks again to various fan content. Where I used to think of love stories as not only relying on some hand-waved "love at first sight" but reliant on some one-sided element, either celebrating helpless obsession or featuring white knights serving distressed damsels. Obviously, there was always more to love stories then these things, but it was through My Little Pony that I took notice of couples where neither partner felt weak, and through ponies where I first took notice that romance could be about much more than how great romantic love supposedly was, but about things like smashing boundaries, even though I was already familiar with such stories elsewhere (Beauty and the Beast).
And lastly, musical numbers. It was getting into My Little Pony that I learned why I disliked them, and why other people enjoyed them, and learned to enjoy them myself. There were many reasons I didn't like them: I didn't connect to the emotions or the stories and that made many of them annoying, I couldn't follow the words, I hated getting them stuck in my head, I viewed them almost like they were "sugar-coating" and deflating the emotions of a movie with whimsical breaks from reality that bash character's emotions over your head.
Seasons two and three of My Little Pony, especially Magical Mystery Cure finally made me face musical numbers as a vehicle for story telling rather than a WTF moment, because I sure wasn't skipping any of the songs in the season three finale.
My Little Pony is in a category all its own. Like any product with an active fandom, it's not just a TV show, but an interactive experience that can become a part of your life, something you can contribute to, that can make you think or learn. I don't even know how to rate it as a TV show without the fandom, because the fandom has been such a huge part of my experience with it.
As a show, it's always been like watching a wrestling match, but the opponent is everything the show attempts to defy; seasonal rot, executive meddling, and of course my own prejudices. I haven't just watched this show, I've rooted for it, I've awaited new seasons with the tension of wondering whether it will be another victory or if it will lose.
Other cartoons have received critical acclaim in recent years, but none have held the same promise to challenge me as My Little Pony has. None have promised to tell me I'm wrong, to smack me upside the head and ask me to change how I think.
Or maybe it's just that none of them have animation that instantly draws me in. Or . . . honestly, there is no one thing that makes this show magical. That's not how magic works.
Magic is connections, multiple entities in harmony, like friendship.
So with the start of Season 8 we were introduced to the Student 6 and the School of Friendship where the Mane 6, plus Starlight and sometimes other friends, have begun teaching the students about Harmony and Friendship in the ways that ponies see the concepts.
They faced some challenges and threats, hell the Student 6 were even chosen to wield the elements of Harmony, but something has been left unsaid for now.
. . Just what is the future for the Friendship Academy? I know that Twilight wants to keep teaching and that she wants her students to help spread friendship across ALL of Equestria but. . . what then? What do y'all imagine will be the future of the Friendship academy? Will the Student 6 help create their own schools of Friendship mixing in their own people's concepts into it in their own lands?
Hi there! It's Thursday again and that means another chance to talk about what's been happening around here and how you feel about it!
Same as every other time, feel free to discuss whatever it is you'd like regarding our little subreddit good or bad. If you're unhappy we'll try our best to fix whatever problem you're having!
If you want to talk about the MLP fandom in general, that's fine too!
But some people may not want to talk about comics or anything else that hasn't happened yet, so you should be nice and hide those conversations from those people by using the spoiler tag.
If you don't know how it's as easy as making an emote:
[It has ponies!](/spoiler)
Becomes: It has ponies!
And if you're not wanting to discuss the subreddit or community specifically you can also check out the weekly off-topic thread that will be up at noon Pacific time!!!!
