MLP Season 7 ep 14... lolwhut? · 2:00am Aug 14th, 2017
Okay, it was kind of inevitable, but this episode is obviously a case of fandom references... done bad. Awfully. Even offensively for some people. The Opposite and Anathema to the faithfully and respectfully done Ep 100. But well... honestly my issue is less with that and more of how... nonsensical this episode is. I'm not even angry about it, i'm just like... this is a really stupid episode. Not even enraging, just... stupid.
MLP Fame and Misfortune basically has the plot of, Twilight publishes old Season 2-3 Friendship lessons. These lessons instead of teaching ponies, ends up making her friends lives miserable due to them becoming... either celebrities, caricatures of their characterized selves... or seen as terrible.
My problem with this episode isn't that it references the fandom so unfavorably. My problem is that... whoever wrote the episode tried to reference the fandom at the expense of the episode making a lick of sense.
Pretty much NONE of the situations except for Rainbow Dash's and Rarity's situation make any sense at all or mirror any basis in real life. Rainbow Dash becomes adored. Rarity becomes hated, for what they did/described/wrote down in the journal... While honestly I am not sure if ponies would respond to RD and Rarity's entries in that manner, their cases at least mirror what happens when certain information about celebrities is made public. People either love the celebrity more, or hate them more. I get that.
But the reaction for Fluttershy, Applejack Pinkie Pie, seems to draw so heavily from fandom rage/reaction that they make the Equestrian ponies reactions to them totally unbelievable. Inconceivable. Hilariously bad it's like watching the episode trainwreck in slow motion.
Take Fluttershy. It's as if the Equestrian ponies treat Fluttershy's and her battle with assertiveness/shyness as a fictional pony in a story arc which... makes me go... wtf? For Pinkie Pie the disconnect is even worse.
Equestrian ponies see Pinkie as comic relief... in a way that just makes no sense at all. The Fandom saw her as just... the funny one b/c well, she fell into that trope, but Pinkie in the journal and in that world is a real pony. If anything, the journal would have been treated more like... the publishing of juicy information in a gossip rag, which meant that Pinkie would be laughed at yes, but for her ridiculous antics, or doubted. Not just... that weird laugh all the time thing they do.
Applejack's one seems to be the MOST disconnected from Reality/any lick of sense. Not only with the reactions Equestrian ponies have to her entries, but her reaction to them. For one... while I was amused to see Applejack being popular... There's no fandom analogy, or even real life reference (okay possibly Waifus ) to explain why the Equestrians would want to be part of her family and... more to the point, if they did want to be part of her family, I imagine part of them would be so crazy that they would be trying to help her work the farm... and probably failing at it. Instead of that "misguided sincereity" though, you get sheer jealous idiocy/caricature which... reeks of "plot convenience."
The major problem with the AJ segment though is that ... she accepts them as family and doens't just boot them out? I mean, I'm part of a big extended family. YOU DON'T JUST ALLOW PEOPLE TO INVITE THEMSELVES INTO IT! You're probably even more protective of who gets to call themselves family than anything else.
And what puzzles me the most is... they missed a big opportunity with Twilight. MOST of the Friendship journal entries are her friends, but she has quite a few and admittedly... some of the most crazy ones *cough Lesson Zero, which started the whole journal/friends adding their lessons I may add*. Why doesn't she fall into any criticism? Or reaction, if Equestrian ponies are so over the top insane/plot devices.
EDIT:Oh and for the love of god... I FORGOT SPIKE... THE WRITERS FORGOT SPIKE ... and he literally wrote most of the thing with his own claws. And Twilight didn't even seek permission to publish the book from him.... oh dear.
And this is all not even going into fact that after a massive, probably, really useful self-help book was published... by a Princess of Equestria and it's heroes... did no one (minus two fillies) really take anything of the original lessons from it? And why weren't we shown this?
Look writers. MLP Production staff. Writing is hard. Original ideas are hard. I know, I'm bashing my head against my original novel... but this is subpar. Like really laughably subpar. I"m not going to stop watching MLP anytime soon but this episode certainly makes me question if my like for MLp was really for the quality of the show or the quality of the community... of which this episode has only shown the bad parts of with little context or regard for reality.
Thus far I must say your opinion is the unpopular one about this episode. Doesn't make it any less valid, but that's what I've seen.
It was just fanservice, with a bit of a poke to the fandom. I thought it was hilarious, but then again, I didn't take it too seriously.
~Crystalline Electrostatic~
22:8_8/13/2017
While I agree with you, I found the episode to be rather funny for just how over the top everything was.
In the end you can lust write the episode off as a bad dream. Or a short hop back in time to make sure it never happened.
This is really aligning more with what i found distasteful on the thing. Honestly, it just feels like a poorly done poke at the meta humor of things.
You do know that ep was written by M.A. Larson, right? Who else would give as an episode that basically says fandoms are idiots?
I can see where your coming from but this is targeted towards the more problematic parts of the fandom who take things way too far.
4633661 Probably. I don't take the "episode is offensive" thing but I don't say "the episode was fine" XD
4633664 I found out I couldn't take it too seriously. I just... wished it made a lot more sense.
4633768 Admittedly, yes that was pretty funny for how over the top it was.
4633818... I don't think MA Larson wrote it. I heard from insertauthorhere that he had the idea for it, but didn't write it.
4633972 It IS... but it pokes those fandoms in a way that as I pointed out... doesn't really make sense.
I agree the episode was bad. Just painfully bad. Hell that one pony even commented that Twilights CHARACTER would have done better if she had stayed in Canterlot. This makes it seem like they aren't taking the book as self help or an autobiographical but instead as a work of fiction.
What also hurts it, in my opinion, are the damages that are never fixed. Rarity talked about loading orders most likely thanks to the book, Apple family are slaves to these freeloaders, Pinkie Pie is losing it, and so on...and nothing is really being done about it.
For Twilight, this could have been her time to shine again. To fix this mess and get them to see how silly they were being or something. Make it a teaching experience. But that doesn't happen. Instead we get a lame Starlight due ex machina ending making her the one with the answers or solutions while the mane six are given the Celestia treatment for ever occasion
This is why I might stop watching the show next season and why I'm not planning on seeing the movie. Season seven is trashing the mane six while praising the new comer.