MY TAKE: HEADSPACE: Brotherhooves Social by Ignolian-Thorne on DeviantArt · 5:10am Oct 4th, 2015
: It's a beautiful day in this neighbourhood, a beautiful day for a neighbour, would you be mine? Could you be mine?* -- OH LORD! We're on the air! Hello ladies and gentlemen. My name is Babs Seed. I have come back from playing witness to the unfortunate sight of my cousin losing the Sisterhooves Social competition. I'm so sad she lost. Here to discuss the events of this is our special guest, Core DeviantArt member Ignolian-Thorne. Thank you for joining me.
: It's my pleasure Babs.: Let's begin by commenting on the film that was made about those games. What do you think of it?: To be honest, it's not the greatest episode ever, since that title probably should go to the leaked episode "Scare Master", [Babs cringes] but there's nothing overly wrong with this episode. In fact, its moral is possibly one of the strongest the show has ever delivered, and it did make me tear up, which the show has never made me do before.: Oh. So it was a great film.: Correct! So naturally, the Brony Community is almost immediately decrying this episode as one of the worst of the series.: Really? I wonder why.: 'Brotherhooves Social' is right now being accused of being a "Trans-Phobic" episode, because they have Big Mac in a dress, speaking in a falsetto voice and pretending to be a woman, since as far as the audience is concerned, Stallions can't enter the Sisterhooves Social.: It has the right to be. It IS trans-phobic because they had a very stereotypically offensive way of using it. I'm a straight woman, but I have full respect for LGBT people. Your statement is like accusing LGBT folks of, rightfully, attacking individuals like Pat Robertson.: Given that the Brony Community tends to have a Tumblr-esque way of thinking these days, I can't say that I'm overly surprised that people are getting extremely offended at a joke that was done all the time by Bugs Bunny 70 odd years ago, and many other characters since then.: I'm a Bugs Bunny fan. As such, I don't think you should've roped him into this.: In fact, that may be the actual problem here; the fact that Big Mac in a Dress is played up as a Joke, in a series that is mainly about comedy and making people laugh. : Um, um, are you not seeing things too clear? Are you too much in love with this to hear? Is it all going in one ear and out the other?**: Wow. You have a very fine voice.: Thank you!: The show creators are not in the wrong here, as they're just using one of the more vintage jokes in their arsenal to help tie a narrative together and deliver an outstanding moral. Sure, it's not Politically Correct, and no matter what you create, someone will be offended, because humans are all different and crazy in their own unique way, but the real question is "Is this Episode Harmful in it's Message or it's Delivery?" The Answer is obviously NO.: Do I have to repeat the lyrics of that song I sang earlier in this interview?: If you want an example of episodes that have been done poorly, I can provide you with quite a few. "Wonderbolts Academy" was a fairly good character building episode for Rainbow Dash, but the lack of redemption for Lightning Bliss does sour the ending a wee bit, especially if you read the script for the alternate ending, which saw the character learning a lesson herself, instead of learning nothing and being tossed out of the Academy, because jerks will always be jerks no matter what, right? -___-: Go on.: "The Mysterious Mare-do-well" actually has a fairly good message, but the delivery is not done overly well, due to Rainbow's friends coming off as Hypocrites. Brony Reviewer Josh Scorcher did point out that the episode's delivery wasn't as bad as it seemed, and while I'm inclined to agree with him, the scene in Sugarcube Corner is still the Mane Six bragging about themselves, no matter how you slice it.: Go on.: "Appleoosa's Most Wanted" is another episode that uses another vintage trope that is honestly never funny; in which the Adults are all idiots, the Children really know what's going on, but the Adults refuse to listen because the Children "are too young to be getting involved with these affairs." To be perfectly honest, this episode left me with a rather bad taste in my mouth over how cliche it was, and how everyone's intelligence plummeted. "Somepony to Watch over Me" is also guilty of this, and possibly does it a whole lot worse, with only a cool looking Chimera as a redeeming factor, that immediately squanders it by not having it tie into the moral, when the potential to was there.: Go on.: "Rainbow Falls" is egregiously horrid with a poor execution and a forced Moral, and it brought both Rainbow Dash and the Wonderbolts to a new low. Even when "Rarity Investigates" put them in a much better light, it still doesn't redeem the actions of any of the characters involved with that mess.: Go on.
And of course, I'd be foolish to leave out "Do Princesses dream of Magic Sheep", which botches what could have been a very good, if not great episode on depression, and had the potential to build up the relationship between the royal sisters, but decides to leave out Celestia entirely, and it converts its message from one of depression to one about self harm, and because of that, the whole thing actually becomes a harmful message; probably the first in the series that could genuinely hurt someone that followed the moral of this episode. The delivery is also not very good, being rather generic for most of the Mane Six, and clearly there to fill time and create an excuse for the final scene to happen. Worst Episode of the series.: Go on.: And the less we say of "Slice of Life", the better.: Mind you, I have had a very good professional relationship with a Michigan resident by the name of SuperPinkBrony12, and he's a pretty good analyst on fan reaction to episodes of My Little Pony. The opinions you have on nearly all the episodes you have just mentioned, as a result, are kind of like the opinions Bosley Crowther had on director Arthur Penn's 1967 film Bonnie & Clyde.: Really? In what way?: Just as he happened to be that picture's most dogged critic, you are probably gonna be the most dogged critic of each episode.: No..............................................: Anyway, continue.: So at the end of the episode, Big Mac's disguise falls apart and it's revealed that he's a stallion. Big Mac and Applebloom are disqualified from the Social, but not because Big Mac is a guy. In fact, the Judges already knew that he was a guy, and simply chose to not bring it up, allowing him to compete however he wanted, since the social is apparently very relaxed on what defines a "sisterly bond". However, they are disqualified due to Big Mac's unsportsman-like actions in destroying the course and putting the other competitors in harms way during the race. Some people seem to have a problem with the fact that the Judges knew all along that Big Mac was a guy, but at the same time, I argue that if they had questioned his decision to enter as a woman, knowing that he was a man, that it would have actually been a little trans-phobic. And as for the ending, that would have only been Trans-phobic if they had disqualified him for ALSO being a man, alongside destroying the course. However even though everyone knew he was a guy in a dress, nobody actually questioned him. Sure, he did get some odd looks from the other competitors, but that was most likely them thinking "Um... he does know that men are allowed to compete, right?" or even more likely, "Dear god his Falsetto singing is cringe levels of bad." : OK. That makes absolutely NO sense. Even if everyone knew he was in a drag dress, the way my big male cousin was portrayed here would still have been trans-phobic. I invite all of you to see that movie about drag queens. I have. It's wonderful. And much less offensive and stereotypical.: No..............................................: And that does it for all of us here. Good Day!
''WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR''
by Fred Rogers.
''HEY THERE''
by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross.
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... Say what now?...
3441607 Ignolian-Thorne on DeviantArt is being scolded for short-sighted and inherently out-of-touch commentary on this and most of the other episodes that he mentioned in this: http://ignolian-thorne.deviantart.com/art/HEADSPACE-Brotherhooves-Social-564059442
3441928 Ah, I wondered what this was about.