A Better World (With Glimmers of Hope) · 8:05pm Jul 4th, 2017
Just so it's clear: we're trying to avoid this.
This blog is for anyone who's willing to listen.
A great way to watch and examine My Little Pony, and figure out just what it's on about, is to remember who it's being shown to. Who its target audience is. What its mission statement is, based on the 100+ episodes that have aired to this point.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is for little children. (Specifically for little girls, but boys are invited too. Why exclude?) Talk about the virtues of "all ages" and "family shows" all you want, I'm not gonna disagree--but in the end, this sucker airs on kids' TV blocks. It's partially a vehicle to sell toys to the 5-7 crowd. It's for the generations younger than what you probably are if you're reading this. If you're reading this and were a wee one when MLP aired and thus you grew up with it, then heck yes, it was for you too--and the stuff it's taught is probably ingrained into your conscience. I'd love to hear from you.
Were you in high school or above when MLP started, though? Then welcome to the Fringe Audience, my friend. Don't worry, we've got plenty of chairs go around, and lots of candy. Being part of the fringe audience is shockingly fun, unless you don't like seeing girls being sweet on each other. In which case there are seriously 2,384,907 other television shows for you to get your testosterone fix on with. Complaining this about this show's (and fandom's) emphasis on gals always seemed counterproductive to me given the overall landscape of pop culture. Another discussion for another time, though.
The above said: MLP is also for the parents who vet and watch such shows with their children, and want to teach their children good values. What are "good values?" Well, they're ones that hopefully work better than the ones that got us into the world we're living in today. If you're someone who enjoys the clusterfuck that is Earth (both online and offline) right now, well... please, tell me your secret. I get the feeling that for a lot of us, though, it's been an absolute shitshow for the last few years now.
And in these times, MLP as a show has proven itself to be a fantastic refuge. If you allow it to be.
The mission statement of MLP:FiM goes has always gone beyond pure entertainment and escapism. If you like those things, great. The majority of people on this site are really into The Magical Land Of Equestria. I like being part of in the world that Canterlot High School exists in, because I'm weird. I like playing with that world like I would a toy. Meanwhile, yes, I like mai waifus just as much as anyone else.
But all the escapism, all the shipping, all the Shimmerdrooling, all the Wanting To See Our Favorite Characters Be Awesome Or Seeing The Big Events That We Want could not be further from what FiM is truly about.
Because FiM is about showing us a blueprint of a better world, and how we can get there. (...and yes, it's also about selling toys. )
A better world is a world where things like punishment and retribution are old, obsolete concepts, dragged out of the shed only when absolutely all other avenues have been exhausted.
Where forgiveness and learning are held in highest regard.
Where hard work is not only its own reward, but nobody minds doing it because everyone's your friend anyway and work isn't nearly as tough when you're with your friends.
Where compensation is fair.
Where second chances, and even third and fourths are given so long as the person being given those changes is consistently shown to be self-aware about themselves and their mistakes. Because again, forgiveness, and learning.
Where people are already, deep down, in touch with their better angels.
Where personal pain, and the reasons behind it (there are always reasons, multifaceted or not) is acknowledged, and worked through instead of judged.
Where someone, somewhere, always has your back if you're having a social problem.
Where disagreements are acknowledged and discussed rather than allowed to mutate into wars.
Where all of the -isms of the world are not only unheard of, but they would be absolutely laughed at if described to its inhabitants.
Utopian? Perhaps. Impossible?
Not in the slightest. This is absolutely a world we can get to. Slowly, but surely, if shows like FiM continue to exist, and other creations take the things that work best from it and breed those concepts.
We can get to a better world because the people who watch shows like FiM in their formative years and do their best to adopt the values they teach already know why doing bad things is bad. Not because someone told me that "bad things are bad" to my face for twenty seconds after I just watched them punch/shoot/slash things up for 25 minutes (with not even a shred of slice-of-life downtime). Seriously. That was my day. My day was dumb.
The fights were kickass, though. Seriously just ASKDALDKJSKFJDAKJASdS LOOK AT THIS 
MLP, by contrast, is a kids' sitcom about interpersonal relations, and it's shockingly smart. More so when you realize that sitcoms tend to be people just snarking on each other at the rate of 1.5 laugh tracks per second. And one of its secrets is that it shows by example, regardless of whether or not it risks a character's marketability. It shows first hand, while pulling very few punches, how you can screw up friendships to the point of near irreperability, and it shows how to fix them to the best of your ability. If you need a quick and easy example, look no further than Honest Apple.
FiM forces you to accept a character, flaws and all, and then look at yourself through the lens of whatever character you most identify with to see what to accept about yourself, and what you can maybe afford to polish, while also reaffirming your personal strengths. You don't have to like every character, partially because not every character concerns you. There was a time, eons ago, when Applejack was my #2 and Rainbow was #6. These days, those positions have been emphatically reversed and then you might want to double Applejack's number. :D But if I know a character like Applejack in meatspace, then hey, I just might be able to navigate the minefield.
And that's just the first line of defense. Watching FiM as a kid will give you a leg up on how to forgive gracefully, even if the person you're forgiving doesn't "deserve" it. But forgiveness isn't an up-front merit-based thing. It's paying it forward on faith or trust that the person you're forgiving will make good on it down the line, and has the emotional and mental capacity to. This doesn't mean that "justice" is suddenly extinct, but it would only have to be enacted when absolutely necessary. Which, really, is a small fraction of what people do its name in our current world, while also confusing it with vengeance.
Zordon had it right. Especially the third time around.
This is stuff that a lot of us in the Fringe Audience had to figure out for ourselves, all the while with the world getting dumber and more agressive.
But we can change it. By actually listening to what MLP has to say instead of getting angry that it didn't do exactly what we wanted this week. I used to do that all up until the end of Season Five. Graceful storytelling is a thing I personally value, and by and large, I consider MLP's ability to do so rather suspect.
But that's not its mission. Its mission is to deliver the message. Sometimes it's with the eye-rolling subtlety of a sledgehammer, invariably leaving character likability or fanservice opportunities as casualties in its wake.
Pictured: How My Little Pony Delivers Its Morals
But that makes the messages no less valid. The show takes the lumps so that its viewers don't have to.
The values of friendship and forgiveness, and showing actually why no one wins through hurting others by showing those consequences up close (on an emotional and empathetic level), if allowed to propagate across media, will lead to a more enlightened humanity.
For now, though, we'll simply have to be the change we want to see. As I have decided to do today with this blog.
I'll level with y'all: it's exceedingly hard for me to write about these sorts of issues without slipping into my base urges to just talk down to strawpeople. I've seen so many misinformed opinions on the show's handling of forgiveness, redemption and Starlight over the last few years that by this point that I seriously have lost my ability to be diplomatic on the subject. Therefore, I'm going to close it here, and both now and in the future, I'm going to point to blogs I see who are better than me at putting together how I feel about this. There's one tenet of the show's current direction that they haven't covered yet, that maybe I'll get to. I don't know, though. Hopefully someone will beat me to it.
Carts's Starlight Blog (Part 1)
Cryo's Starlight Blog
DWK's Glimcast (in fact, watch his entire channel--keep in mind that the vulgarity is off the charts, but this guy gets ponies I swear)
I have watched Starlight Glimmer get an idiotic amount of hate on this site and elsewhere for almost two years now. I don't think it's wrong to dislike her (as I said above, you don't have to like every character simply because they exist), but as far as I'm concerned, it is wrong to paste her existence, and the show's focus on her, on there being some sort of flaw with the show. The show knows exactly what it's doing, and quite frankly, for those who think it's worshipping her... seriously, go look again. She's being put through the wringer.
Her entire four-episode debut arc is a look at how unhinged she is (the "lack of backstory" was the point, folks), her reformation episodes all center around her being an absolute social inept and her slowly having to accept that and slowly work through it and get lectured by Twilight every week, the one thing she's objectively good at is the thing that invariably puts her in hot water and causes suffering to herself/those around her--and to top it all off, her best friend is Trixie. Every single episode she's in is based on either how terrible she and screwed-up she is as a person...
...and how she can still be valuable to the world in spite of.
This is some heavy shit, and if you consider yourself a disaffected member of society, Starlight is straight up a salve. Yet I see people do nothing but spit at it because their waifu isn't onscreen. This is the world we live in. No wonder Equestria's so damn appealing.
That's all the Starlight rant you get from me today. Also check out Carts's Justice System blog which just went up today that talks about why no one really gives a crap about the whole eye-for-an-eye thing in Equestria.
As for me, get ready for another Starlight story on Wednesday that might surprise you... and then it's time to shift back into high gear. You might notice we're heading towards a certain round number in terms of my story count...
~B
Well said, Bookish, well said! Have a cute Starlight in reward.
lh3.googleusercontent.com/-A7sH7UTVYlE/VU-4nCkjU4I/AAAAAAACHkY/XlKfbjrb4ko/s1600/StarlightGlimmer.png
My strategy is this:
Not care about politics in general.
Heck, the worst thing for me last year was Carrie Fisher's death.
That's also part of my strategy: Caring more about MLP than most real life stuff.
That's exactly why I actually like the numerous amount of redemptions in the show.
I'm curious as to why the switch was THAT drastic.
Because for me, personally, the only change in my ranking of the mane 6 was Applejack swapping places with Rarity due to season 5, with Rarity being in 5th place and AJ being in 6th.
For me, personally, there's not a single episode that has actually made me angry.
Luckily for me, she IS my waifu.
I look forward to the Starlight story.
As for the 50th story, part of me hopes it'll be the first story in a rebooted version of the P3 Project, partly because of that stuff you said about AJ and Dash.
I see imagine Twilight and Starlight Glimmer having that chat with Twilight as League Batman and Glimmer as Lord Batman. Better than the cliche 'expose the leader hypocrite to destroy this belief system you don't like'.
Exquisitely said all around. Thank you for this blog.
We did? Gene Roddenberry had all this shit figured out, prepackaged, and available for public consumption since 1966, if you were willing to listen and had two brain cells to rub together.
4592227
A very fair point. The only thing I would say is that TOS/TNG never strictly fell into the "kids' show" category. She-Ra and GI Joe were Saturday mornings and afterschool. TOS/TNG were Saturday afternoons and prime time.
(
But totally yup otherwise, and I'm sure its fandom had these same conversations back then. Probably still do now--I've only ever followed Trek tangentially and seen one series to completion.
And it's the one no one likes but screw everyone I love it. :P4592215
hfs that is a cuet starlite
Couldn't have said it any better. Excellent blog post, and those reasons and more are part of why Equestria as a setting feels so peaceful and relaxing. Even when things go south for our little ponies, there's still a sense of optimism and camaraderie that fits with the setting and the stories they're trying to share.
4592236
My old man sat me down in front of TOS when I was about five and basically said "This," so for me it kinda was, but yeah, not everybody is lucky enough to have a parental figure like him to help light the way.
I used to joke that I learned everything important that I needed to know about life from Star Trek and MacGuyver*... over the years I've come to realize that it's less of a joke than I originally thought.
* Yes, there is a Swiss army knife in my pocket and at least one roll of duct tape on every floor of my house.
Also, that tells me you watched either DS9 or Enterprise,
4592223
Oh yeah. Lords Gotham City struck me as eerily similar to Starlight's Town when I rewatched that episode. Smaller scale in terms of its "police state", sure, but those core concepts...
The thing that gets to me is that some of us relate to Starlight precisely precisely because she got a second chance that she may not have "deserved" because someone believed in her ability to do better.
Takes all kinds, I guess.
4592280
You were lucky and learned, sir.
(My parents plunked me down in front of PBS a lot. I think I ended up learning everything but empathy.)
4592219
It's not. I had this idea before, seriously, and on paper, I love it.
But I'm pretty sure I don't have that in me anymore. XD
I'm sorry to hear you're not gonna blog anymore of your own words. But I'm glad you'll help highlight those who do say good things.
I'm also curious about your position changes of AJ and Rarity.
As an aside, I grew up with G1 mlp but I suspect you're meaning folks who grew up with G4 n_n
As for forgiveness...there are people I can forgive and others who have harmed me in such deep, profound ways and shown zero remorse for it that I can't forgive them.
To use a metaphor from the show, it's the difference between Starlight Glimmer who never really intended to do any harm and just needed to learn a new way to well...everything and Sombra or Tirek who are just evil for the sake of being evil.
This was a delight to read and certainly helped me put some things into perspective again as well (that I objectively know, but subjectively find hard to accept sometimes).
I do like Starlight (because I like pretty much every character except Treehugger and the first four seasons of Diamond Tiara), but it's still always nice to be reminded of why I can and should enjoy seeing characters of this show interact with other characters of this show.
I'm definitely going to share this blog. Thank you for writing it.
I very much agree with you, Bookish, and with the opinions of the first two whom you linked. My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic is very much about redemption rather than revenge, and the redemption of Starlight Glimmer is very much in this tradition. This is not only the tradition of the show, it is very obviously the governing philosophy of Princess Celestia, one which she has instilled in Equestria as a whole, and one which she has transmitted to her Former Faithful Student, Twilight Sparkle.
The obvious defect of redemption as a philosophy, is that someone who is truly and irredeemably evil may exploit your good intentions to harm you. There is evidence in show that both Celestia and Twilight are fully aware of this, and are nowhere near as naive as certain fans may imagine. Note what happened to Chrysalis and Tirek, for example.
But when forgiveness works it can be very powerful. There is some evidence that the initial success of the Indo-European peoples came from the fact that they developed superior techniques for making peace with defeated enemies and incorporating them into their own tribe. We have repeatedly seen that Equestria assimilates defeated foes into its own Realm, making allies out of them.
If one can carry it off, it is a very potent strategy.
4592227
I don't know, I always felt like Star Trek was awfully shallow in its vision of how society would change: as far as I can tell, it handwaved a lot of problems away with "because technology" by assuming that the world would become post-scarcity and that this abundance would magically make society better and kinder and gentler and more harmonious for everyone.
But I think this wasn't the point of Star Trek—the more advanced world was just supposed to be a backdrop justifying these crazy spaceship adventures of a bunch of people who were essentially very little different from the audience—and never really elaborated enough on the minutia of how that happened or how it might work to make a convincing argument that simply sitting and waiting for technology to solve the problem is a viable solution. As the world is showing us (has always shown us throughout history, really) assuming things will just naturally get better "because technology" isn't a good answer. On the contrary, it might have enormous potential to make things even worse.
That's why I think MLP is very different, and why it's on a far better track for positive futurism than things like Star Trek, as paradoxical as that may seem given MLP's lack of focus on sci-fi / technology: MLP is about people and how it's on them to change and make themselves and the world a better place, not about how something external will do it for us, or give us fantastical tools to make the job easy until just sort of happens on its own if we simply "because technology" it enough.
You...I like you. I like what you say. Well done!
You know how I felt, and in some ways, continue to feel. I've softened on her enough to forgive most of the problems with how the character was introduced, and how she was mishandled (in my opinion, we don't need to hash it out again)
I watch DWK myself, he's hilarious, and he's actually helped a lot for me to stop worrying and love the Glam. But the person who helped me come to terms with her as a character concept was actually far more cynical: Greg, from Dawn Somewhere.
He said the reason we needed a Glimmer at all was essentially because all of our characters had reached their fondest dreams and ambitions. We have these six wonderful characters that we all love, but they are done. Not easy to write lessons around anymore.
And, oddly enough, Glimmer was much the same. She's not evil, she's misguided. She's a character that informs the audience as being so charismatic that she can and will charm the destiny off of your flank because she tells you it's for the best. Then they took this character and made her insanely focused on revenge, insanely capable of acting on said revenge, and... they broke her.
I don't mean that she is a broken character. They've fleshed her out a lot, and the idea of emotions helping to strengthen magic even helps explain anomalies like Flurry Heart and Scootaloo (the former being an alicorn love generator bursting with the affection of her parents and an entire nation and the latter seemingly lacking the lift needed due to a criminal lack of confidence boosting in her childhood. Makes you wonder just how confidence in a pony like Bulk Biceps helps him where it keeps poor Scoots grounded). Basically, seasons six and seven have greatly helped her.
But the basic need to be reformed is how she was broken. Help me, Senpai. Teach me the ways of the friendship. I got an entire town to follow me, but it was from a position of hatred, and now I must learn how to start relationships that don't involve dominance and brainwashing. I must learn, because left to my own devices I went down a path of destruction that caused pain in so many others that I now question my own judgement.
That is how we got her to be what the writers needed. Writing about a formerly confident and competent character fucking up again and again makes for good morals.
But Glim herself? Yeah, I can dig her now. You can only resist a glorious bastard for so long.
4592297
I'm sure you do...
At least enough for two fics:
An alternate version of Blunder and Lightning that would fit more in line with current canon.
And a sequel to that where Dash is treated better than she was in the beginning of Appleconomics.
4592398
Not much I can add here but I did want to say that our original disagreement way back when?
Yeah, I was kind of a shit.
I'm sorry about that.
4592464
Oh, that maid outfit's never leaving Rainbow as long as I live. In fact I may write up an EQG version. :3
But a Blunder redo... the idea has merit.
i.ytimg.com/vi/pyXZV2xhaQU/hqdefault.jpg
4592475
At least give a better reason for it if you do...
Like say, she's trying to impress Soarin by being his maid or something.
And my issue with Appleconomics isn't the maid outfit itself.
It's more the opening scene of it, where Rarity broke her promise to AJ by bringing multiple ponies to see RD.
Without that scene, Appleconomics would have been amazing.
4592466
Eh, I was needlessly flippant. If we weren't good I would have unfollowed and stopped commenting on your stuff. But the thought is appreciated.
It's hard to read emotion into text, but what I said back then, I really was sorry I made you upset. I never had any real ire (a bit of annoyance, but not actual ire) towards you, and I sure as hell wasn't trying to disparage our mutual hobby. I was upset about what I saw as bad decisions being compounded by people who seemingly weren't invested in making good entertainment. And I am very invested, so much so that when a new character comes along and steals the spotlight... yeah.
But even if some bad calls were made, by the very nature of the show's ever changing staff we're now ending up with writers who are actually fans of the show, and have made some quality stuff that would easily fit into someone's best of lists. And while she had her hero moment, Glimmer is not replacing the mane six. She's become a prominent pony in her own right, but not by subverting the ponies I fell for years ago. She's simply also there, and has her own thing.
And that's okay. I rather like kite-loving Glimmer off teaching Trixie magic (and maybe much more).
4592475
Like, here's a good alternate version of Appleconomics that doesn't humiliate Dash as much:
Instead of helping out at one of the Apple Family Reunions (or whatever event it was. I dislike both it and that segment of the original Blunder too much to go back and double check), the arrangement they came to is that Rainbow has to be AJ's private maid for a day, or until AJ is satisfied with what she's done, whichever comes first, and AJ has Pinkie Promised that none of the others, nor Scootaloo, will find out to ease Dash's already hurting ego. Not even Rarity, even though Rarity was the one who made the outfit in the first place.
And all Aj has Dash do is stuff that she'd do to help out normally, like buck trees and help make dinner. The only difference is that she's in a maid outfit.
At some point, the Oranges come by and say they're there because heard of the financial troubles, and then the rest plays out similarly to how it did in the original fic, just altered to fit the new setting
In this version, Dash is still in the maid outfit, RD still defends AJ, and they have that heart to heart moment.
Except this time, only 3-6 (depending on how many of the other Apples that live in Ponyville you'd want to include) ponies see Dash in the maid outfit, and her dignity is mostly intact.
I mean, you're free to write and not write whatever you please.
It's just that I'd LOVE to see you write this alternate version of that fic, and make it the sequel to the redo of Blunder, if you do that.
You are right on the money, Bookish! This show, that so many of us embrace with much adore, shows us the better way and our better selves. Would that the world could see the lessons of the show and pursue them with as much zeal as they do their dislike for one another. It would be a much better world, indeed.
If I ever get the chance, I'm emigrating to Equestria and requesting a political asylum. I'm also going to ask that anyone (anypony) that subscribes to Fimfiction be granted asylum as well. Then we could all share in the magic of friendship.
Until then, I will follow your lead, Bookish. I will try, even more determined than before, to improve the place where I am. To be a better pony, and to show how others the ways of friendship. I know I fall short, at times; but I will endeavor to become more like our friends in Equestria.
Thank you, Bookish. You are an inspiration. *hugs*
4592514
Can we leave the really bad fetish writers behind? I think some of those guys might make for bad neighbors.
4592518
Now, now....every pony deserves a chance to change. If they don't, then we let Princess Luna deal with them.
This is definitely all food for thought, and I'm with you regarding complaints about characters such as Glimglam. One reason I would make a very poor critic is that all my reviews could be summed up as, "Don't worry, be happy."
But there are a few things I think I can add to.
I wouldn't worry too much about the world, since it was always an absolute shitshow. It's just that media coverage of it has been increasing for years, and probably decades. So, "don't worry, be happy."
Thing is, I submit there is a case to be made for the heroines to interact with lots of male secondary characters, and here's why. This show is about teaching philosophy and social skills to children, especially girls--okay. Growing up, girls are going to be interacting with people of both sexes, so it is important that they learn to do so. The good news is, the show has done exactly that. Heck, we just got three good ones in "The Perfect Pair."
Confession time: I still take issue with Season 1, since back then the showrunners seemed not to have realized that you can be pro-girl without being anti-boy. (What a concept!) Perhaps I'm making mountains out of molehills, but that's how I saw it. So I'm pleased with the direction the show has taken.
In fact, I would be interested to know who's making these complaints, since I heard the last one literally years ago.
Uh...
... "Don't worry, be happy?"
4592369
Classical science fiction isn't about technology; it never has been. It's about holding a mirror to society to examine moral and social issues through an observer's lens.
Think of any of the great science fiction writers: Asimov, Heinlein, Orwell, Vonnegut... their stories portray amazing and outlandish things accomplished through technological advancement, but the core of every tale is a human or other being with distinctly human-like qualities who faces choices and challenges that a person living in almost any time period can find some way to relate to.
Star Trek is the same way. In Roddenberry's vision, technology isn't what made humanity decide to better itself (if that were the case, then why isn't every alien race with equally advanced technology just as enlightened and altruistic?). Technology gave mankind the opportunity to better itself, but contrary to many of his contemporaries, Roddenberry felt that mankind would not squander that opportunity. At a time when many people thought mankind was teetering on the edge of a literal nuclear apocalypse (remember that this was during some of the most intense years of the US/Russia Cold War), he wrote a story that could inspire and give people hope for a future that other science fiction writers were almost universally painting with a black, dystopian brush.
I've heard the claim that Star Trek solves all it's problems with technology many times, and as I've said then and say again now, that simply isn't true. At the core of most episodes, especially TOS and TNG, the vast majority of the major challenges presented are moral and ethical in nature. In fact, many problems are presented as having a technological solution that comes with serious moral and ethical repercussions. Even when technology does offer a solution, there are a number of episodes where there is no 'right answer', and characters are forced to either choose between two poor solutions to a problem, or sometimes not even outright solve the issue at all, and how they react to these situations is where the true beauty of Roddenberry's narrative shines. He tells a tale of a humanity that had the potential to learn from the mistakes of its past and chose to better itself. Much of the technological advancement that is seen in Star Trek only exists because mankind learned to set aside their differences and work together for the greater good; not the other way around.
Nothing more to say. Agreed.
A while back, there was something of a fad for alternate universe takes on the show, with alternate Mane 6's, new character dynamics, new spins on old stories, and new stories outright. My favourite, for all its flaws, has always been one of the first - RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse.
Partly, this is because I'm an unabashed fan of lunar mythology, so seeing anything that really digs into the nature of the moon put front and centre tickles me. But it was also partly because the story put Trixie in the protagonist role, letting her try to fill Twilight's horseshoes without wiping away her flaws. Lunaverse's Trixie was a fundamentally flawed character; she was a pony who struggled with friendship, struggled to rein in her ego and channel it productively, and I liked that. It gave her enormous potential for character growth, and a sense of how important it was for her, and how much progress she made through the stories, to learn how to be a good friend.
I've actually fallen behind quite a bit with the show, but I guess what I'm trying to say here is that if Starlight is following a similar path, then I have something to look forward to.
4592651
I believe you mean, "Be worry, don't happy."
My only point of contention with the meat of this written piece is that the show can, and has demonstrated that it can many times, that it can fulfill its 'mission statement' as you put it without sacrificing strong character development, or story telling. In fact, it's because of those that it fulfills its mission statement so well. At least for me, the biggest reason MLP succeeds where many 80s cartoons failed is not in the tone (though it does help it stand out), but in the depth of its narratives, (story, characters, ect.) by comparison.
4598507
You've actually touched upon a common thing people note that wanted to talk about, so thanks for that. I'll expound in a soon-to-be-forthcoming blog.
4598533
You're welcome. Glad I can contribute to the discussion.
4638947
Thanks, image fixed and.... meh. Six of one, half-dozen of the other. :D