Depressing · 3:41am Dec 27th, 2015
You know, it's pretty depressing to see the number of people whose enjoying of Second Birthday hinges on whether Twilight's friends are punished/called out for their behavior. My Little Pony: Friendship is Punitive.
I don't really mind if people think the plot is stupid, or the writing is mechanically terrible, or if they just plain ol' don't care for the story, but I don't really understand the insistence that Twilight needed vindication somehow or the story is awful. I don't know about you guys, but I don't really call my friends out on each and every transgression that they have with me. I bring it up when it's a big deal to me. I view the girls friendships the same way. They generally shrug off the small stuff and confront each other when it's a real issue.
For example, Pinkie is terrible in Filli Vanilli, yet the girls just sort of glare at her from time to time as if to say, "Really?" They don't stop the whole episode to deal with Pinkie Pie being a crappy friend in that exact instance. The show is littered with examples of them being pretty shitty friends, really. It's a show about learning how to be friends, after all. But when Rarity was a shit to them during Rarity Takes Manhattan, they didn't call her up on it right then and there.
I guess part of it is that I don't really see the story's end as the end. I expect life goes on after the words are over. If Twilight's friends are shitty to her in the story, I don't consider that to be the final word. To me, it goes without saying that if it's a big deal, Twilight will work it out. It doesn't need to be explicitly stated that each and every wrong needs to be tallied and reconciled.
In the end, we all have different tastes. It's fine by me if people don't care for that story. It's just that the whole "Twilight's friends must PAY" feel of the comments seems against the whole spirit of friendship to me.
Dunno. It just reminds me why I stopped writing here a couple of months ago. The whole feel of the fandom just feels different to me. Much more ready to go for the throat instead of embracing.
In a show where destroying the future multiple times results in "we forgive you, now let us show you that friendship is awesome" nopony needs to be called out, and Twilight "Some of my best friends have tried to murder me" Sparkle would be unlikely to want to punish her friends for just being a little shitty to her one day.
What's Second Birthday?
Anyway, my circle of friends is pretty quick to try to rectify exceptionally awful behaviour between members of our group. It's important that we make up for our mistakes in our group and understand them when they're made. Not seeing that has a ring of injustice to it or implication of lack of consequences that rubs some people the wrong way. The Filli Vanilli episode is a great example--because Pinkie learned nothing about why her awful behaviour hurt Fluttershy, she has every chance to do it again without thought to potential repercussions. That said, the level of hostility and aggression some people put behind it is certainly uncalled for. There's making a person understand their behaviour is wrong and they need to make up for or at least apologize for it, and then there's taking revenge. One is the sign of a developing friendship, the other is the sign of a developing grudge. That said, where that line goes is often blurry, I find.
Different strokes for different folks.
EDIT: Having now caught up on Second Birthday, the transgressions seem...completely minor. Twilight is brow-beaten into her friends celebrating a day in her honor because they're concerned about her well-being and happiness. How is that sinning, exactly? I'd be flattered if my friends did that for me. Touched, even. Spike, on the other hand, is a manipulative little shit in that story. But even then, it didn't really greatly hurt anybody, even if Spike's behaviour was way out of line. I'm failing to see why this had to be super srs bsnss.
Well, Twilight's castle does have a Friendship Dungeon....
You still got me supporting you.
Just a bunch of people that hopped on the hype train and are looking for a reason to "quit the fandom" now that everything is mellowing out.
Still on vacation so all can offer are hugs of agreement
3645195 That's the thing. It seems so weird to me that people are so concerned with justice at the sake of friendship, and that they don't see that a limited focus for a story is fine. Not every plot thead needs to be tied together at the end of a story for happiness to occur. Not for me, at least. I have faith that Twilight can deal with the issue off-screen, as it were.
3645200 That's how I see it. Yeah, there behavior is kinda shitty, but not so much so that they need to have a full blown friendship reformation process over it. I'm pretty sure they were all sitting there thinking about why Twilight blew up and what they could have done differently. Do I really need to go over that? I don't think so. It's not really important for the plot.
3645243 And I greatly appreciate it. I should show you the sorta Lovecraftian weird tale I did on the spur of the moment the other day. PresentPerfect is irritated that I haven't put it up here.
3645273 It just seems to me that at one point, bronies were pretty dedicated to positivity. Not sure about other pony sites, but Fimfiction seems to have lost that. There are still plenty of great people here, but so many others that are just looking for a reason to be a dick to people. No different than any other place on the internet, really, but one of the things I used to like about pony was that it usually WAS different than the rest of the internet. Couldn't last forever, I suppose.
3645222
Discord: Twilight, what exactly are these charming devices?
Twilight: Those are the Shackles of Friendship! And this is the Pillary of Mutual Understanding and Brotherhood!
Discord: Is it too late too reconsider my reformation?
Twilight: Far, far too late...
3645394 Sounds like the start of a clopfic...I'd read it
3645330 I'm more perplexed than upset. It's kinda irritating, but my main issue is that it just seems to antithetical to what the show is about. I mean, I suppose I could have Twilight march out there and say tell them all her feelings had been hurt, and they could all apologize, but why? She blew up and then was guilty about doing so. I'm pretty sure that time in the other room allowed them to reflect on what had happened and their roles therein. To me, it's tedious to have to go through every little thing. I can surmise that the rest of the cast probably amended their behavior. I don't need it explicitly stated.
I enjoyed the story, appreciated its idea and found the character's actions to be pretty believable if it's any consolation
3645461 I think the majority of people got what I was trying to do there. It's not a perfect story by any means, but I just don't think the thing that most people are complaining about is a major problem with the story. Just my opinion, though. The fact that so many people DO have the same complaint is evidence that something is happening. It's a psychological study, really. I think all the times Twilight got cut off and run over really wound people up in a way that I didn't anticipate.
I do appreciate the vote of confidence. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
3645394
Discord: And this?
Twilight: The Rack of Acceptance
Discord: And this?
Twilight: An iron maiden
Discord: Of...?
Twilight: Nothing. It's simply an iron maiden.
Discord: ...Okay. Waiter, check, please!
3645389 I get that feeling man. I found MLP:FiM when I was pretty frustrated and turning bitter, and it saved me from becoming a cynic I've never wanted to become with its positivity. I had high expectations of people interpreting the show's message (as I saw it back then) in a similar way and taking it to heart when I first turned to the fandom, and while not everything was perfect, I sure found a great deal of awesome people.
I don't know why we've lost that, or if it's even true. Maybe I'm just focusing on negative things more than I used to. Maybe the fact that being into pony is less judged and more acceptable than it was back then is attracting more judgemental people that change the climate.
Sadly, humans are a lot less forgiving than ponies, and some of that leaks into our writing.
Also, I really need to read Second Birthday.
Looks like it's Cytotoxin being a bitch. As usual.
I'd ignore her.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Speaking as the PR who endorsed it for publishing...i'm sorry
It was an enjoyable story, with an entertainingly-presented look at the results of assumptions, miscommunication, and overreaction.
What you describe here sounds familiar to me. Not here on FIMFiction.net, but I noticed this on Equestria Daily this year.
When I came there in 2013, the comments were friendlier and more positive than they are now in 2015.
Nowadays there seems to be so much negativity on Equestria Daily that I wish that Sethisto and Calpain would take drastic measures and call out quite a few people there, with hoofing out temp-bans or even permanent bans if necessary, to make the atmosphere there more positively again.
Which of course won't be happen because of "Well, everyone has opinions". Said opinions are unfortunately often straight insults directed at the show staff or at people liking an episode, from people who either judge an episode on petty little details or completely miss the point with an episode and interpret all sorts of stuff into it to call it a "bad episode", which happens to an amount that you just can't enjoy it anymore to read the comments about an episode on Equestria Daily.
Which is something I realized this season, hence why I stopped reading episode comments with this season. It just ruins the fun with an episode to see all this negativity from people who think the show should cater to them and who call an episode bad if it doesn't cater to their specific likes and tastes.
All of this is reason why I now wish Equestria Daily would get a real moderation team that puts a leash on people here and there.
Opinions or not, but once it becomes a torture to even just read episode comments or once you have to avoid reading certain comments because you know your head will hurt afterwards, something's amiss on Equestria Daily.
Anyway, FIMFiction.net is a different matter altogether. I have to check this more thoroughly first, but I have the feeling that episode discussions are a lot more positive here than on EQD.
And for the comments on your story, I can't see what you say about negativity reflected. I didn't read the story, but I went through the comments and analyzed them:
There were 46 different people commenting on your story. And only 8 of these people expressed negativity over your story or said what you mentioned up there. Makes 38 people who like the story and wrote positive comments about it and who didn't complain in the way you described (or in any other way).
38 positives vs. 8 negatives. I'd would say that's a pretty clear case here:
Judging by this result, you paid too much attention to the few negative people. And the most probably on Cytotoxin, cause he's the loudest and started to argue with you over the story.
Letting these few foul apples aside, you got an overwhelmingly positive reception of the story, that reflects both in the comments as well as in the upvotes vs. downvotes ratio.
It's more a matter of how much negativity you perceive than what is actually there.
You should focus more on the positive comments and, if in doubt, just go and count them and compare them with the number of negative comments.
On a sidenote, I noticed something especially interesting:
Five of the eight negative commenters came after your story was featured on Equestria Daily, which kinda proofs my point about the massive negativity there.
I get more and more the feeling that Equestria Daily has become the gathering place for all the negative people in the fandom.
3645479
I think one of them is just a troll...
3645676 I honestly believe that a lot was lost when the show got rid of the letters to Celestia. I think a big part of the appeal of the show for a lot of people is that they literally don't understand how friendship/kindness/generosity/etc. work. I remember reading A LOT of letters in forums talking about how those letters were something they valued at the end of each episode.
Some of it is just fatigue. It was fun for a while to be counter to the internet cynicism and trollishness. It was trollish to be positive and happy in online threads where it drove people nuts. But being nice and a better person is hard work. It's like watching what you eat. After a while, you just want to eat yummy crap again. Your tired of having salads and steamed veggies. I think a lot of bronies are tired of being nice and just want to go back to being dicks again. I lot of them joined up TO be dicks, just in a new way.
3645714 It's just silly fluff, but I think it's entertaining.
3645842 Yeah, I just roll my eyes when I see her comments. I always wonder if people like that know that they are a clown to everyone else. If you're never wrong and you never have anything positive to say, you just become a sideshow character. But there are a lot more people in that comment section than her. Some of the them, like Japanese Teeth, have good points that I agree with. But "Twilight's friends would never treat her like this!" isn't one of them. The girls treat each other kinda poorly on a regular basis.
3645851 It's all good. That story was kinda unpolished by design, so I expect to get more negative feedback than I normally get. The thing that gets me isn't that people say that the characters are being dumb/oblivious, or that it goes from being a comedy to something rather serious all of a sudden. The main issue people seem to have is that they don't believe Twilight's friends would do such a thing. To me, they do this kinda crap to each other all the time. They show was largely built on them being dicks to each other in varying degrees for at least the first two seasons.
But there are a lot more people that liked the story than disliked it, so that says something, too. You can't please everyone, and people are REALLY protective of Twilight and Celestia as characters. I think that's what really pisses people off in this story. I really put the screws to Twilight in it.
3645862 That's how I saw it. It's not my greatest work or anything. It's just a silly idea that I think I explored in an amusing fashion.
3645884 Oh, I'm not upset that there are negative comments about that story. I expected more of them, actually. I generally spend months writing and editing to get every little detail perfectly honed (well, to the best of my ability). I didn't do that here. I just wrote it, read it once, then hit publish. It was an experiment. I knew going in that it wasn't going to be as well received as most of my other stuff.
The thing that I find disturbing about it is WHY most people seem to have an issue with it. They seem to want the rest of the Mane Six punished for their behavior, or at least to have a scene where they all apologize to her. I see that as superfluous to the plot. It's not about the whole group. It's just a story about Twilight learning to relax and let some things happen rather than being controlling. That's why the first couple of paragraphs are explicitly about Twilight being ultra controlling to the point of ridiculousness.
3645994
Well, as I said, it's not "most people", just a few. And you shouldn't dwell on that and let it get to your head.
As you just said yourself, a lot more people liked it than disliked it. Focus on those people, not on the small "This fic is bad, because it doesn't cater to my specific taste in regards to stories." crowd.
Is there anything that has changed at all? I'm right now completely torn by this.
Earlier this year, I went back in the history of the fandom to a very old EQD news post from 2011 that was about a brony who officially renamed himself in "Fluttershy".
It was funny to read and adorable that he loved the show (and Fluttershy) so much that he even changed his name to reflect that love.
Yet in the comments, there were so many people who put their best second-hand embarrassment skills to the test and ganged up on him and told him that he is making THEM look like idiots by "changing his name to the one of a fictional cartoon pony" and, which where it got really worse, demanded (!) from him to change his name back to his former one. Completely ignoring that it's his choice how he wants to name himself.
They pretty much bullied him to get him to do what they wanted about something in which they have no business in and no right whatsoever to put their muzzles in.
It then resulted in it that the brony who changed his name wrote a comment on Equestria Daily himself, expressing his disappointment over the behavior and asking what has become of "Love and Tolerance".
And again, this was in 2011. When this fandom had just started and when the show was only a few months old.
After I had already made bad experiences with the fandom on Equestria Daily last year during the great hiatus between Season 4 and Season 5 and thought the fandom has changed over the years, this really shattered my hopes for this fandom and made me question if the brony fandom ever cared about its own motto to begin with.
But now that I saw that you initially paid so much more attention to those eight negative commenters, instead of the thirty-eight positive ones, I'm questioning this and ask myself if I maybe tapped in the same trap, that I paid more attention to the negative minority of the fandom, instead of the positive majority, and if those bullies I talked about above and the negative people in episode comments' sections scream just louder than the majority.
Cause in the hiatus between S4 and S5, I went through a hard time dealing with depressions, which made me pretty negative myself, and even with the start of Season 5, a bit of this remained and I only got rid of it completely a few months ago, when Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle got their cutie marks, cause that threw me out of that state completely.
So maybe I'm just focusing on the wrong people too. I really don't know what to think right now..... I'm confused.
3645420 Thank you for speaking up. To me, redemption and forgiveness are probably the single most important themes in the show.
When I first decided to check out MLP, I watched the pilot two-parter, and thought it was pretty good, but most of the way through I thought "eh, I'll give it a pass." Then Celestia forgave Luna and made her co-ruler on the spot, and that was what made me decide to keep watching.
And yet, there seems to be a angry cadre of fans who want more laser-guided karma and villains suffering and being harshly punished than the show gives them. Not Luna or Trixie, because they are often "best pony" to many of those fans, but there are so many howls of outrage about Starlight Glimmer and Discord not forced to endure some sort of horrible magical punishment from the forces of friendship and harmony. Heck, even minor antagonists who barely committed any crimes, if they are unlikable (say the FlimFlam Brothers or Suri Polomare) get frequently featured in fix-fics where they are properly punished for their sins.
I just don't get why so many fans love Equestria, they just want to severely restrict the love and tolerance in it.
3645994 It seems like you don't have a shortage of opinons, so I'll keep this brief :)
I can identify with the people your talking about with the 'vindication or it's bad' thing. But, I can say: you have definitely open my eyes here. I reckon, if you could somehow find a way to get this point across in the story somewhere it would probably de-spell a lot of dissatisfied readers.