Starlight Glimmer Shapes Impressionable Young Minds · 5:51am Jul 2nd, 2018
“Knock knock!” Twilight called as she pulled open the door to Starlight’s office. “How’s my favorite guidance counselor in the world doing?”
“I don’t know,” Starlight said, sitting up in her chair. She had a mug of empathy coco in front of her, along with a thick book she was halfway through reading. “How is Princess Celestia doing?”
Twilight stared at Starlight. She blinked. Then she sat down in front of Starlight’s desk, and pulled out a bundle of papers. “So! I wanted to talk with you about something.”
“Too close to home there?”
“It’s about some of the students who have been seeing you!” Twilight pressed on, subtly raising her voice. “So, you remember that portal to Equestria High? Sunset Shimmer, alternate universes, that whole thing? Well, recently, Sunset gave me a lot of human cultural material for the school. Books, movies, she thought I’d enjoy it.”
“I know.” Starlight took a sip from her mug. “The students have been passing around those little square things that play movies. Most of it is actually pretty good!”
“They are really enjoying them!” Twilight said, but she spoke through a strained smile. “So when I decided we should have a class on cultural sensitivity, I thought it would be a good idea to have the students analyze some of the films from the human world. That way, none of the students feel like their culture is being analyzed. They can all approach the problem as equals.”
“Sounds like a good idea.” She swirled her mug, looking down into the brown liquid within. “So uh… what do you need me for? Help grading the papers?”
“They turned in their papers this morning, actually! Let me read one of them to you.” Twilight pulled a single paper from the bundle in front of her. “Ahem.” She cleared her throat. “‘The core theme of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the futility of democracy. The inability of the Galactic Republic to fend off the military aggression of a rogue state serves as a classic example of the misallocation of resources under so-called ‘humanitarian’ regimes. By allowing domestic spending to take priority over the essential needs of the state, the Galactic Republic got billions of its citizens killed.’”
Twilight lifted her face from the paper and squinted at Starlight. Starlight took another sip of her coco. “Sounds about right to me.”
“Uh-huh.” Twilight pulled another essay from the pile, snapping the paper taut in front of her. “This essay is about The Incredibles. Have you seen it?”
“I have.”
“Do you think this essay says that it’s a fun adventure story with recurring themes of love, family, and the importance of honesty in relationships?”
“I mean,” Starlight waved a hoof and gave a little half-laugh. “Who knows what it says? Foals these days, right?”
“‘The Incredibles’” Twilight raised her voice, reading every word with force, “‘is the most sinister film of the contemporary era, employing bright and colorful imagery to conceal its menacing and ultimately self-serving themes. Its core story depicts a group of natural-born ‘superheroes’ as they thwart a ‘supervillain’s’ plot to give away his advanced technology and make the world a better place. Using memorable scenery, likeable characters, and gripping action scenes, The Incredibles conveys one clear message: ‘Some people are born superior and society has no right to judge them.’”
“Ha ha. Aaah.” Starlight chuckled. Her smile was wide and stiff. A long pause hung in the air. Then Starlight sat forward, resting her hooves on her desk. “You know, one way to look at this is that that’s very good use of language for someone their age.”
“Starlight!” Twilight’s ears folded back as she glowered. “Did you tell the students what to write?”
“No!” Starlight threw up a hoof. “If I did that they wouldn’t learn anything. I just made sure that they saw the movies in their proper context. So they could understand the broader cultural themes.”
“They’re all like this!” Twilight quickly sorted through the papers in front of her. “The Lion King: Hereditary monarchy whose royalty actually cannibalizes their subjects experiences family turmoil plunging the land into chaos. Beauty and The Beast: Legitimately elected champion of the people attempting to save kidnapped woman slain by unelected aristocrat. But it's okay because he was a jerk and she later developed Stockholm Syndrome. Up: An old stallion wastes helium to satisfy a foolish sentimental desire!”
Twilight brandished the paper like a weapon, waving it at Starlight edge first: “You didn’t like Up!? Fluttershy and Pinkie cried when we saw it! Plus Applejack cried on the inside.”
“Oh, come on.” Starlight waved a hoof, softening her tone. “I liked some of them! Monsters Inc was really good.”
“I noticed!” Twilight ripped another paper from the pile. “Monsters Inc is the—”
“Do you have to read them—”
“Yes!” Twilight sharply cleared her throat. Then she started to shout. “Monsters Inc is a heartwarming adventure story about two working class stallions who uncover a sinister plot by the bourgeoisie to harm a nearby parallel universe for the sake of their own profits. This surprisingly realistic portrayal of the rampant greed inherent to class distinctions highlights the need of capitalist regimes to constantly expand to new markets, harming the citizens therein. In the end, joy becomes the new energy source of the land, metaphorically reflecting the joy of the people as they are no longer alienated from their labors upon being united by the electrified collectivist state!”
Starlight sat in silence, a small frown on her face. Twilight needed a moment to catch her breath, the extended shouting having knocked the wind from her. She wheezed slightly.
Starlight filled a mug with more coco and placed it on Twilight’s side of the desk. “I can see you’re upset.”
“Yes! Yes I’m upset! You can’t tell the students these things, Starlight.”
“Why not? They’re true.” Starlight shrugged. “Come on. The Lion King has an entire scene dedicated to how the lions eat the other animals. And then we see that the other animals can talk? Tell me that’s not a little messed up.”
“They’re foal’s movies!”
“That just makes them more pernicious!” Starlight raised a hoof. “Foals learn their social cues from the culture around them. Think about Beauty and the Beast. If you had a daughter, would you want her to watch a bunch of movies about mares getting kidnapped and then falling in love with their kidnappers?”
“No, Starlight. It’s not the same. If you want to point out the little oddities in a story, that’s fine, but not to the degree that it overrides what the story is actually about. Star Wars isn’t about ‘the failure of democracy,’ it’s an epic battle of good against evil.”
“Is it though?” Starlight sat back in her chair. “Go back to the original movie. Alderaan sponsored a rebellion against the Galactic Empire before the movie even starts. That’s how Leia gets captured. Everything we see in the movie is the Empire responding to Alderaan taking aggressive action against them.” She folded her rear legs, putting a hoof up on the desk. “Basically, Alderaan shot first.”
Twilight sighed. She laughed. The threw up her hooves. “Fine,” she finally said. “Analyze them however you want. But if you don’t want to enjoy these stories as stories, you’re not going to keep getting invited to movie night.”
Starlight quickly took her hooves off the desk and sat up straight. “Woah. No. Twilight. I do enjoy these movies. Just because I interpret them a little differently doesn’t mean I don’t treasure them!”
Starlight pulled open one of her desk drawers and drew out a thick bundle of paper. “See? I wrote this during the slow hours.”
Twilight slowly took the bundle. It had a cover page. She eyed its title. “Death-Star Crossed Lovers,” she read aloud.
She knew she should drop the bundle. But she couldn't. She couldn’t look away. Dread fascination compelled her to continue. She turned the page.
“This is your fanfiction,” Twilight said. Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she swallowed. “Your protagonist is an imperial unicorn named ‘Starwise Sunbeam’ who thinks that Grand Moff Tarkin has a ‘sexy voice.’”
“I mean,” Starlight laughed. “He does have a sexy voice! But don’t worry. It’s not that kind of fanfiction. Starwise and Tarkin aren’t in a relationship or anything.”
“That’s…”
“Tarkin,” Starlight spoke firmly, “would never cheat on Darth Vader.”
A long silence came over the room. Then Twilight put Starlight’s manuscript down, rose from her chair, and walked out into the hallway.
“Twilight!” Starlight called. “Oh come on, Twilight! Don’t be that way! Twilight!”
After a long pause, Starlight shouted out the empty door into the hallway: “You can’t deny there’s something there!”
So beautiful...
Yeah... Starlight's take on Star Wars in this short story, is more than a little lopsided and troubling....
Following Starlight's logic here; apparently the provable crimes of one individual, justifies mass murder, and the literal destruction of an entire planet... Tarkin explicitly states on camera that Alderaan is being destroyed, simply to send a message to all other worlds of the Empire, a message that can be summarized as thus: Obey, or die.
The original Star Wars movie established in as short a time span as possible, that the Empire is an oppressive dictatorship, that rules through fear; where the entire military apparatus has been retooled explicitly too the task of intimidating the masses, and killing anyone who resists. where all remaining vestiges of democracy have been undermined and dismantled, by a corrupt and evil head of state who has eliminated all possible checks and balances that once might have been able to restrain his power.
Fantastic work, Jaxie. I really dig how Starlight's view of the world, even though reformed, is still incredibly non-standard.
"The core theme of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the futility of democracy."
Well, to be fair, while I haven't seen the new movies, from what I've gathered, the plot of the Star Wars movies is now basically "Democratic government is corrupt and weak, unable to stop itself from being toppled by one of its own members (through the mechanism of a legal election) and turned into a dictatorship. Said dictatorship then proceeds to highly effectively pursue its agenda, though it is eventually brought down by a small resistance group only half-deliberately taking advantage of the psychological particulars of its upper leadership, as well as getting extremely lucky and/or having destiny on their side (though with the possibility that destiny may also have helped establish the dictatorship). Things end really badly for the rebels who led the fight against the dictatorship, though, and their attempt at reestablishing a democratic government ends up even worse than that previous one and destroyed by the rallying remnants of the dictatorship, which are still extremely formidable despite their much-reduced position."
"reading every word with a force"
What force?
"and gripping actions scenes"
"and gripping action scenes", or was that in character? :)
"but not the degree that it overrides"
"but not to the degree that it overrides"?
"putting a hoof up on the deck"
"putting a hoof up on the desk"?
"You can’t deny there’s something there!"
...You know, Tarkin did order Vader around and not get choked for it...
4893188
You’ve literally just described Our Town under Starlight’s management.
4893205
The Jedi's flame has gone out in the galaxy...
But there will always be a flame in Tarkin's heart.
Yeah...
I mean. Starlight kind of has a point.
derpicdn.net/img/2016/9/29/1261008/full.jpeg
It blows your mind, man!
All fixed! Thank you sir. :D
4893208
Somewhat... but not really... Starlight did not take over 'Our Town' and turn it into a cult like Orwellian nightmare; she founded it that way. The ponies who followed her did not realize the hell they where signing up for until it was far too late, and even then, blind commitment to the cause, isolation from the outside world, and gradual adaptation to the increasingly hellish conditions had prevented them from realizing just how badly everything sucked.
Furthermore, while Starlight made full and unrestrained use of psychological manipulation, peer pressure, and message repetition; at no point did she ever actually threaten bodily harm, even to Twilight and co. let alone murder, never mind punitive mass murder. Given her well demonstrated power level and magic skills, she certainly could have made good on such threats had she ever actually resorted to making them.
Perhaps Starlight would enjoy stories from or based upon non-Western media:
Fullmetal Alchemist is the story of how the hubris of two brothers and their pursuit of greater knowledge leads them down a dark path. The resolution comes from the sacrifice of their special talents, allowing them to retire in peace in their small hometown.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon shows how the inherent danger in the pursuit of greater knowledge and skill.
Voltron is literally a metaphor for the sacrifice of the self in service of a larger whole.
4893211
"The Jedi's flame has gone out in the galaxy...
But there will always be a flame in Tarkin's heart."
:D
"Yeah...
I mean. Starlight kind of has a point.
derpicdn.net/img/2016/9/29/1261008/full.jpeg
It blows your mind, man!"
:)
And yeah, the Empire seems to have done a pretty good job carrying out the will of the Emperor, just, you know, Palpatine kind of wasn't a very nice man; a better dictator could have meant better conditions for the people without sacrificing security, and while one might try to make an argument that there basically can't be a "better dictator", making that argument in Equestria, well... how is Twilight's favourite guidance counselor, the beloved, feared, and seen-as-superior-to-everyone-else being who was the sole pony at the top of the government for a thousand years, doing these days?
(By the way, semi-random, but did you ever come across this before? Two episodes, no idea if there will ever be more, but I recall finding them ages ago and enjoyable. Don't know if you'd like them, but thought I'd give you the opportunity.
(Though good grief those ships in the opening are flying close together.))
"All fixed! Thank you sir. :D"
You're welcome! :D
I've seen this debate before in many different forms. This post does a very good job on putting its finger on one side of it, but I feel it makes Twilight look kind of like an idiot for not articulating her own side.
Here's the basic disconnect: Starlight is analyzing these pieces of media, and teaching her kids to analyze them, purely as ideological payloads and representations of broad principles, philosophies, and outcomes. You'll notice none of the kids use NAMES in their essays. That has to be deliberate, because the way they're approaching this media, the people in it don't matter. Indeed, they're not even people; literally every one of them is either a metaphor, an archetype, or an avatar. They're not individuals, because an individual can't exist under Starlight's lexicon; they have to be a stand-in for something else. Starlight herself does this when she talks about Star Wars; she barely talks about Leia, the person, and she doesn't talk about the people of Alderaan; she talks about Alderaan the metaphor-for-terrorists she's constructed it as.
Twilight, on the other hand, is approaching these as personal stories about individuals and groups of people. The Beast and Simba aren't stand-ins for the entire aristocratic class and metaphors for their entire system of government as it exists in the real world (Equestria); they're individual people with their own unique life experiences. The fact that Gaston is "legitimately democratically elected" in some way doesn't matter because Gaston the person is terrible shitstain acting out of horrible motives, whereas the people he's acting against have idiosyncratic reasons established in their personal narratives that make them the good guys when they otherwise might not be. Twilight's entire life is about peoples personal stories and their relationships with others on a deeply personal scale. The individual has paramount importance and their special circumstances excuse or nullify any broader implications. And she extends that to how she engages with media.
Starlight doesn't give a shit about any of that, whereas to Twilight that's very nearly all there is.
Neither of them is precisely wrong, per se. But neither of them is right either. For both of them the others perspective on the matter is something like an outside context problem; they approach each other at such an orthogonal angle that the other worldview can't be contained within their own worldview. To each other, they're "not even wrong."
There isn't really a resolution to this, because sometimes pieces of media DO need to be analyzed from the perspective of them being ideological payloads with broader societal implications, and sometimes they need to be analyzed from the perspective of the personal stories of the characters contained therein. And if someone could figure out a reliable way to tell which is appropriate at what time, they'd be the first to do so.
well this was amusing.
You know, this always did strike me as a potential problem with Twilight's letting Starlight help her teach. Starlight's not evil any more, but she's still a radical collectivist in terms of her political philosophy -- and Twilight's school is teaching future leaders of society.
She does have a point about The Lion King, and it is a point that would be even more obvious to a non omnivorous species. The class hierarchy is hideously steeper when the upper classes literally eat members of the classes below them.
4893242
You basically said everything I wanted to far more eloquently than I would have. Kudos.
So, Starlight taught children Big Impressive Words that are Applause Lights? Uh-oh.
Starlight would be a pretty terrible fan, yeah.
4893242
Agreeing this is far more eloquent than what I was going to say. Adding to it, however,
Starlight, through approaching the stories through a particular ideological lens, is ignoring the fact that many of these stories are not problematic in context and often deal with her points directly. For example, in The Incredibles, she conveniently overlooks that Syndrome could have given his technology to the world at any time. He had murdered at least 20 people, and who knows how many more were killed in his robot attack, purely to satisfy his own ego. She's also missing the earth cultural context: that the 1960s as portrayed in The Incredibles actually is incredibly advanced, and various other 'gageteer' supers are probably responsible. For that matter, the message isn't that some are born superior and we have no right to judge them. It's that some are born superior (which is true, if to a lesser degree in real life), and they should be allowed to express that rather than hiding it. It would be like saying Mozart shouldn't have played the piano because his skill might make people feel bad. It's Starlight reverting to Cutie Marks again.
Similarly in Beauty and the Beast, entirely apart from Gaston being a miserable waste of a human being, the key point is that Beauty can't stand Beast until he STOPS acting like a jerk. Meanwhile, the villagers were all set to kill everyone on principle and completely ignored the protests of the 'victim' they were supposedly out to avenge.
Star Wars...where to start? You'd think that Starlight would see the point of the prequels, which is not about the failure of democracy at all. It's about the corrupting effect of corporate interest over humanitarian concerns, which is a message you'd think she'd be entirely in favor of. And in A New Hope, the leadership funding a rebellion (against what we know at a minimum is an autocratic state that took power under false pretenses run by a literal evil sorcerer) in no way justifies the indiscriminate murder of billions of civilians AND the destruction of an entire biosphere. Especially when Tarkin explicitly does it to make a point to the galaxy, rather than for any military reason. After that, any further rebellion is not only justified but absolutely necessary self defense: who know if you'll be the next 'demonstration'.
The bit about Up is just sheer ill will on her part :p
Anyway, I'm sorry for arguing with your version of Starlight. But SOMEONE needed to give a rebuttal, and since Twilight didn't step up to the plate someone had to.
4893329
On the one hand, this is true about The Lion King. On the other hand, Lions have to eat. This is one of those situations what gets thorny and you can have a good legitimate debate on the way to deal with it. Talk to Fluttershy about it, she should have some good insights.
One could even make an argument that the only way they are able to survive in society is to set themselves up at the top of it and self regulate. Otherwise they'd be like the hyenas, outcasts. And they do self regulate, since there's clearly a religiously taught (and ENFORCED) code of rulership that prevents abuse. When someone tries to abuse the system, what happens? Divine sanction and blight.
Now, could they do better? Absolutely. What they need is a system for donating your body to carnivores after you die of natural causes. Which would also let them integrate the Hyenas. A single adult lion may be able (barely) to live off bugs, but certainly not a full pride of them. Though donated bugs as a diet supplement might also work, and would mean noone has to be hunted anymore. If you're too concerned over instincts and letting lions hunt still, have the 'donation' system work where if a lion 'catches' you that's how they get your body.
I personally think that Starlight Glimmer is the future Alicorn of Fairness. Because fairness is a very difficult virtue to embody, Starlight faces more than the usual conflicts between her virtue and her equine imperfections.
4893361
Yeah, I mean... she kind of comes at them from odd angles, doesn't she?
Like... Beauty and the Beast. There's some legitimate arguments to be made there about Beast's fucked-up behavior. His exercise of "justice" over Belle's father for a relatively minor crime of unintentional trespass is deranged and cruel, and he really DOES kidnap and imprison her, and the movie (and the stories it is based on) really DO gloss that over.
But instead she decides to come at it from the angle of justifying Gaston, of all things? Really, Starlight?
It's the same deal with TFA, where she just straight gets her facts wrong. She's either inferring facts we don't see onscreen, which tell us nothing at all about the New Republic's domestic political structure, health, and spending priorities... or she's read the accompanying novels, which explain that the New Republic didn't neglect military expenditures because they wanted the cash money for domestic spending, but because the Alliance to Restore the Republic had just overthrown a fascist Empire that ruled through force of arms and its very member constituencies were leery of a powerful, robust central government that could enforce its will through strength of arms.
Either case makes her look ignorant and/or disingenuous.
Incredibles is trickier.
Starlight going after it in the way she did is immensely dumb. She makes Syndrome the center of her argument against it. As you say, Syndrome was not "trying to make the world a better place." He was a multiple murderer whose explicit goal was to fuck the world up...
... but part of his view of "fucking the world up" is "give everyone superpowers," and the narrative sort of expects us to accept this as a bad thing. SYNDROME views this as a bad thing! He views everyone as having superpowers as making them meaningless and the people having them just schlubs, which is his purpose of giving them away.
Incredibles is an excellent move in many ways, and from a technical standpoint its script is a pure work of art; its possibly the tightest, most efficient storytelling done by Disney/Pixar in the 21st century. (It's nearest competitor is Wreck-It Ralph. The two movies have next to nothing in common thematically but they're both marvels of cinematic construction.) But it's shot through with a lot of things that a lot of people, quite rightly in my view, see as sinister as fuuuuuck.
Like. Okay. Take this:
And yeah, this is true, although I wouldn't use the word "superior" because boy howdy does that have some negative connotations. But how it is expressed matters a lot.
Like... Dash Parr ought to have the right to use his super-speed to entertain and amaze people, to earn a living with, or just for the sheer joy of sprinting through the park as other people do. But that's not what Dash wants to do. Dash wants to kick the ass of people who don't have super-speed. Him running in track meets is the equivalent of matching Usain Bolt up against toddlers. Nobody would think that was cool on Usain's part. They'd think he was an asshole.
The movie is quite explicit in a couple places that it takes the viewpoint of "in order for some people to be special, other people have to not be. Trying to pretend 'everyone is special' is denigratory to the ACTUAL special people, who deserve to enjoy their status as they see fit." And, well. That seems fraught. To put it mildly.
This is kind of a problem of four-color superhero movies that try and have deeper social and cultural context. Because it's like... okay, you want us to take your premise seriously? If we take it seriously, superheroic vigilantism SHOULD absolutely be banned and treated as a crime. If people with superpowers want to fight crime, they can do it like everyone else does; they can be properly trained, they can wear uniforms and badges, they can be accountable for their actions within a regulatory structure.
Incredibles (and other superhero movies) want us to take them seriously... just not THAT seriously.
The Parr's live a life very much above the law. Bob brutally assaults a non-powered civilian who posed no threat at all to him and walks scot free. Moreover (and this is something both movies do) while Bob is in general a good person, his desire to be a superhero is not at all rooted in him wanting to help people with his natural gifts; it's rooted in him, specifically, deriving validation from being a superhero that one gets the impression he wouldn't get if he had just, say, gotten a job on an SAR team, something he'd be absolutely spectacular at and which would likely save more lives over the long run than superheroics.
Incredibles is not without issue. But starlight... doesn't go for the heart of it. She just goes with "Syndrome was the good guy!" No. He wasn't.
We can leave aside Star Wars and Up. As you say, that's just willful, blithering bad faith on Starlight's part.
4893413
Don't really have time to answer at length now, but I do mostly agree. Especially about The Incredibles. I probably should have picked a different word than superior, what I was trying to get at was "some people really are more talented" without the baggage of "and that makes them worth more as people".
4893329
Maybe i have just been reading to much cold war history lately but your first paragraph strikes me as something right out of the american "we cant allow the enemy to tech our children!" communist hunts.
I'm sure (or at least hope) that was not what you ment but the idea to filter teacher based on their political opinion to prevent children from learning anything that contradicts government dogma is something i find profoundly disturbing. Informed opinions can only be made by hearing all sides and censorship and suppression of divergent views only leads to ignorance witch is only harmfull in the long run (especially for future leaders i would imagine).
/end rant
Hope i din't kill the mood to bad, freedom of information and freedom of opinion are just subjects feel very strongly about.
4893242
This is why I enjoyed my (now-distant) logic and debate classes so much. The personal/impersonal switch was one of the key ways to reverse an argument when I had to argue the position opposite the one I had started with. My professor often referred to it as "granularity." Huh. Hadn't thought of that in ages.
4893329
So have you heard this wonderful conspiracy theory? The (supposed) reason so many children are going missing is that there is a new anti-aging process that requires the blood of prepubescent children. This explains why there are so many apparently healthy octogenarians in government. Circle o' Life, baby!
4893205
Dude!
Don't even say that sort of stuff nowadays!
4893413
This sort of problem has a real-world example. Many agility trials for dogs are now usually split into two categories, Border Collies and non-Border Collies. Supers and non-Supers, essentially.
4893430
Really? How cool would you be with Nazis and KKK members teaching in the public schools?
4893447
...wow. I realize some people on the internet don't take criticism well but i must admit you immediate hostility and your responding with such a blatant straw man rather surprised me, you seemed like a more sensible person based on your previous posts. If you disagree with me that's fine but throwing a tantrum like this just makes you look childish.
As for your "argument" there is a fundamental difference between teaching people about different ideologies (by people of different ideologies) and encouraging people to commit crimes, which is clearly what you where insinuating with you straw man. The fact that i think that children have the right to learn about several political systems and ideologies does not indicate that i support genocide anymore than the fact that i support religious education (despite being an atheist my self) indicates that i support human sacrifice.
I guess it's partially my fault for expecting a serious answer in a discussion about politics on the internet but i guess i lett how mature people generally are in the fimfiction comments lull me in to false sense security.
4893482
Being a Communist is basically the moral equivalent to being a Nazi. Both philosophies inflict massive death and destruction on society in the name of achieving ideological perfection. The difference in the cut of their uniforms does not to my mind constitute a real moral distinction.
Though Rarity might disagree with me. In favor of the Nazis, don't you know, Darling. Regarding the importance of fashion, that is, not the immorality of mass murder.
Starlight Communist is an out-and-out Communist, as shown by her management of Our Town with the principal difference between her behavior now and her behavior then being that she is no longer willing to force it on others. There is thus an obvious danger in Starlight Glimmer helping to run a school, especially at school that is likely to wind up shaping the minds of a future generation of leaders.
I'm not strawmanning anyone here. I'm not even arguing The Starlight Glimmer shouldn't be allowed to teach at the school.
I think that what is going on here is that Twilight Sparkle has decided to give Starlight Glimmer a chance to learn better, as part of her deliberate policy of reformation. I am not sure that Starlight Glimmer totally understands what Twilight Sparkle is doing.
Your problem is that you are so hung up on the magic evil bad word Nazi as opposed to the magic good word Communist that you missed it they are both, morally, pretty much the same thing. This is a common flaw in the generation that has forgotten both World War II and the Cold War.
4893446
Don't even say that sort of stuff nowadays!"
"Dude!
Oh, um, sorry?
Though I'm afraid I'm not sure exactly what you mean; I can think of multiple possibilities.
4893413
Who cares about Syndrome's moral qualities? Writers made his plan in such a way that consequences of it's execution would be overwhelmingly net positive even if he would additionally eat 3 full baby meals per day for the rest of his life ("baby meals" doesn't mean meals FOR babies here
). And then, as story goes, it gets replaced with possibility for heroes to play heroes. There's no need to "go for the heart" to see this. Or course, this issue is fixable with cutting a few things here and there, and we can pretend it was already done and then go for the heart, but that's still a major mess-up.
4893507
The evidence of that world is that the heroes are marketing their advanced technologies as much as possible, which is why it is technologically around the level of the early 2000s in the early 1960s. The problem with Syndrome winning is that an evil megalomaniac would thus be catapulted to immense social influence, to no doubt commit further and greater evils when he got the notion to do so.
This is exactly analogous to the reason why Watchmen doesn't have a happy ending. Ozymandias has averted the imminent nuclear war -- that he almost caused in the first place -- but what happens next, when he feels threatened or bored?
Generally speaking, the victory of evil is not a good thing.
4893485
*sigh* And now you add appeal to emotion and blatant ad hominem to your "argument" (not to mention assumptions about my age). I have never implied that i supported the soviets much less the genocide that you are once again eager to baselessly imply (all the while claiming that equating supporting free speech opposing persecution and censorship equals suporting genocide is not a straw man...). I grew up in Sweden during the end of the cold war, i am well aware how scary our big crazy neighbor was (and to at degree still is). My only mention about communism in this discussion was as an example of my distaste for witch hunts and censorship.
I could also point out that it was the soviet union that killed people not communism, saying that "Comunism" killed people makes no more sense than claiming that that democracy was the thing firebombing people when the united states invaded Vietnam. Ideologies and opinions don't kill people, people kill people using such things as justifications generally with the true goal of empowering themselves. There is a reason why we are still taught about these ideologies in history and social/political science classes today, if knowledge of these things automatically turned people into psychopaths as you seem t think then they would be banned.
...Considering that you have already abundantly shown that you have no interest in a serious discussion i dont know why i am even bothering to write all of this out so i guess i will just stop here, i suspect you will just find a way to twist it into another straw man or personal attack anyway.
4893532
You don't understand. I like Starlight Glimmer, and am glad that Twilight Sparkle is taking a chance on her. I'm the only aware of the fact that Twilight Sparkle is taking a chance on her.
Yes, of course it is no coincidence that communist regimes are almost always dominated by megalomaniacs who use their power to kill lots and lots of people. Communism gives immense power to the state apparatus, which results in a job description for leader which only megalomaniacs really want to fill. It also means the lack of checks and balances on the state power, such that when such leaders come to power there is nobody able to stop them.
4893532
The United States did not invade Vietnam, North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam. Most of those we killed were the forces of an invading army.
Every time Disney remakes Bueaty and the Beast Gaston gets more like-able. He'll be the good guy one day.
4893507
Presumably the people he has murdered, and also the people who are going to be traumatized or financially ruined for life due to his attack on the city?
Those people seem like they'd care a great deal.
We do not generally do moral calculus this way. Doctors are not permitted to murder a few people every year because the lives they save result in a net positive, for example.
4893535
And if Britain had sent an army to the US during the civil war in order to establish a military presence in the Americas for their own benefit (you dont actually believe American intervention in Vietnam was an act of altruism right?) i guess you would not have considered that an invasion either? or is intervening in a foreign civil war just not an invasion when the US does it?
Anyway this discussion has gone completely of topic not to mention it's getting late here so we will just have to agree to disagree and i will probably not respond to any further post here. Good Night.
4893233
Also, yes! I've seen this before, and oh my gosh I love this series. :D
I really hope these all get published in an anthology at some point.
4893571
No, that would have been an intervention on one side of a civil war. Having said that, the US conducted most of its military operations on the soil of South Vietnam, it's ally. Had we been attempting an invasion it is difficult to see why we didn't push into the territory of North Vietnam, our enemy.
I realize this may be difficult for you to understand because in our time line North Vietnam won, and became the government of all Vietnam, but prior to this victory North Vietnam was merely one of the sides in the ciivil war. If the presence of Soviet and Chinese forces in North Vietnam was not an invasion of Vietnam, why was the presence of American and other Western forces in South Vietnam somehow uniquely an invasion?
4893622
Not to put too fine a point on it...
4893625
To bring it back to Starlight Glimmer, here the relevant history would have had to have been the fact that she actually started a malign and aggressive Equalist cult in the North. Analogies between what she was trying to do and the eusocial dictatorship of Chrysalis would hardly have been an encouraging additional example, though the counter-example of Thorax might have implied that this sort of thing could be done more benevolently.
4893527
It's a bit tautological statement, since we usually use word "evil" to denote the side whose victory is not a good thing.
Hmm, the choice between "to die in nuclear war right now" and "to maybe die from Ozymandias later" looks pretty obvious. It's when we start to compare situation against our internal image of how things should be in perfect world both options look bad, but one of them is still clearly better.
Yes, it doesn't look too impossible that he won't actually share his technology, but writers for some reasons put those words in his mouth. They could easily change a few phrases around so, for example, his plan would be to take over the world by presenting himself as a hero who protected everyone from evil robots. But they did what they did. So from there is the questions: what the heck writers were doing?
Also why do you call Starlight a communist? It's not clear at all what could be called "means of production" in Equestria (Applejack's plow? Rarity's sewing machine? Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000?) and she's not trying to put those things in common ownership (well, at least we don't see it; probably even very hard-assed communist won't try to take tools that worker owns and uses himself/herself, though). Well, cutie marks may be kinda-sorta called "means of production" (why not horns/wings/hooves then?), but there's no social class that controls marks and exploits others, and they're not using taken marks in any way.
4893550
They don't care: situation when Syndrome is fucking them up while being morally bad is indistinguishable to them from situation when Syndrome is fucking them up while being morally good. What they care about is his actual actions that happened. Mental states may come into view when we're trying to infer or predict someone's actions that we haven't seen or future actions (but here it's still good to remember that mental states kinda don't really exist on ontological level and are inferred from observed actions). So, for example, to say "hey, he's unstable psychopath and he will abandon his plan to share his tech in favor of becoming eternal dictator of the world" is a meaningful argument (that can be correct or incorrect), but "hey, here's list of all relevant actions he performed, let's talk about his mental states!" is not.
Of course they are permitted. There are pretty definite rules when doctors should stop trying (or don't even try) to save someone's life because it becomes too much of resource drain for too little probability of success. And we indeed should do moral calculus this way if we are interested in things like saving maximum lives with our limited resources.
4893713
We only have Ozymandias' word for it that the only alternative to his mad plan is global thermonuclear war. And HE is the one who pushed things to this pass, for his own purposes.
To take the obvious alternative, would the Soviet Union in that situation have been so willing to strike if they had known that Ozymandias was pulling their strings? In that case they might have been willing to accept good faith negotiation with Ozymandias' execution (for his many capital crimes) as proof of our earnestness.
Syndrome was explaining his own rationale for his actions. These are probably what he believed were his own true motives. However, given the fact that he was a sociopathic, murderous megalomaniac, his claims and his sanity should both be taken with a grain of salt. As in the case of Ozymandias, his own awareness of his own motives cannot be entirely trusted.
4893713
Starlight Glimmer is not exactly a Communist, because this is not exactly our world; it has had a different intellectual history than our own. Nevertheless, the excuse for tyranny in our world that Starlight's philosophy most resembles is "communism," hence I translate it as that rather than (say) "theocracy" or "fascism." The terms I use in my own stories are Equalism and Marksism.
4893713
The "economics" of Communism are just gabble that justifies tyranny, just like the "biology" of Naziism.
4893714
This is simply not so. There are many situations where people who have actions inflicted upon them that fuck them up will either become incredibly outraged OR accepting and even welcoming of those actions depending on the intent and ultimate goal of those actions, and that's moral calculus.
There's also the fact that in the context of "cares about Syndrome's moral qualities" those people would still care about those moral qualities because without them, Syndrome would have acted differently. It seems like if a guys moral qualities are the difference between him murdering you and yours, and NOT murdering you and yours, you'll care about them an awful lot. I know I would.
This isn't murder.
The fact that there are guidelines for triage in extreme situations, guidelines that, in fact, are considered from a strong moral standpoint, is not "doctors are permitted to murder people.". Doctors are not permitted to take a gun and blow someones brains out and justify it under "I saved forty peoples lives on the table this year, so I produce a net positive in lives saved to lives taken." People who do moral calculus that way are, quite justifiably, regarded as monsters.
4893188 But what about all those civilian contractors still building the second death star?
4893792
You're a roofer, just happy to get a cushy government contract helping to build this military base, and then boom. Killed by these left-wing terrorists led by a religious figure.
4893573
Ah, nice. :D
I think my favorite part (that I remember, at least, though it seems likely an even more favored part would also stick more) is the flashing backup lights on the AT-AT. It's just... it makes some much sense while being something surprising from a viewer's likely approach path, but is also funny and ties very well into the general theme of looking at the imperial military personnel as people.
4893792
4893807
Not a humble roofer, but also not entirely unrelated:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11685932/1/Instruments-of-Destruction
4893755
Intent and ultimate goal are not physical and as so can not influence other people directly. I.e. if your guy performed action
Awith intentI_1and in parallel universe he performed actionAwith intentI_2, then people can not react differently because they have no way of telling apart(A, I_1)from(A, I_2). The way that could happen is if people are observing other actions that were left beyond original scope.Those actions have already happened and people already conditioned on them --- that's how they inferred "moral qualities".
And now we're talking about prediction. You would in fact care whether you die or not, not morals. The source of confusion here is that you are working under two assumptions that you haven't explicitly stated: (1) you have a way of obtaining information about guy's morals (duh) and (2) value of that information is high after taking other accessible information into account. Other information may strongly diminish usefulness of morals or even render that information completely useless (that's an effect well-illustrated on Bayesian networks; if you care, I may try to come up with easily understandable example; silliest example is, of course, if you're Master Yoda and can directly foresee if guy will shoot (duh)).
You're playing with details of definition of word "murder". Dying people are important. Definitions of words --- not so much.
Things here kinda depend on your context really much. Reading minds is hard, but I'll try: you probably have implicitly brought context of word "doctor" from real world, i.e. pretty common profession that folks have and it's relatively easy to find qualified doctor who doesn't shoot people. So your decision is either to hire THAT doctor or other as qualified doctor. It's (40 alive + 1 dead) vs (41 alive) --- choice is pretty obvious. On the other hand, if your choice is THAT doctor vs no doctor (or significantly less qualified doctor), then it's (40 alive + 1 dead) vs (1 alive + 40 dead) (or something like 31 alive + 10 dead) --- choice is pretty obvious too.
Well, Dr. Shooter is indeed a monster (or maybe he's cool guy who made a deal with Devil that he's has to shoot someone in exchange to ability to heal much more efficiently). Calling him funny words doesn't help much to make decisions, though --- context does.
4893813
I love that story too! I have linked all of the project managers at work to it.