Tee-Friend-Tee

Here is a story of things going exactly as I expected...

Four nights ago, I’m talking to my friend, whom I shall call Tee in this story, about anything and everything when I for the briefest of moments mention MLP, and he snaps at me saying “if you don’t watch it, you can’t judge it”. I feel my blood begin to boil and calmly ask him to explain his hostility. It turns out he believed I stopped watching MLP because I don’t like it, and this upset him because he wanted to talk about it. I inform him that although I had not seen all of season eight, I do still watch it, and I thought it was his choice not to talk about it because he had said previously that all I do is complain about it.

So I take it upon myself to do the friendly thing which is to make connections with my friend. I resolve that I am going to binge watch the rest of S8 and spend our next talk focusing on the points that I liked and avoid any critique that extends beyond events in the specific episode. In order to do this, I have to do something that I have never done before, which is to take each episode as a stand-alone occurrence that does not imply or infer any deeper meaning to the same character or nature of the world as the same character and world shown in the previous or future episode. I want to take everything as one consistent universe, but I can’t, because each episode is written by different writers without anything more than a weak set of guidelines as to what is acceptable to the show.

After binging the thirteen episodes I had not seen, I tell him I’m ready to geekout. It is important to note that everything below this point took place over the phone and lasted THREE AND A HALF HOURS. I’m trying to tell him I’m ready to discuss ponies, but even after telling him, he goes on about everything else under the sun. I finally get him back on ponies, and it turns out he hasn’t watched all of the season eight episodes. A lesser friend might have bit his head off right then for basically lying about firstly wanting to talk about MLP so badly and then for acting like a hypocrite by not staying on top of the episodes, but I’m a little more patient than most mortals, so instead I ask him what episodes he remembers and would like to talk about.

Tee acts like he completely forgot everything, but eventually states the last epi he saw, and unfortunately for me, it is S8E20 The Washouts. This is unfortunate because this exact heavy handed brow beating “Don’t trust the outgoing people because you’ll get hurt” plot has ended up in every season of every cartoon from 1980 to 1997. I try to stay positive and said that it was interesting to see Scootaloo go off on a secret fan club session where she was the only member because that’s something a real child would probably do, that the uniforms were neat, and that this plot would have made so much more sense if it were longer. Instead of talking about the epi itself, we end up on a half hour tangent about the nature of professional script writers. I reel it back to the show, we spend a minute talking about S8E19, before Tee’s found a way to go off on a tangent again, again I reel him in, and then for some reason he brings up the S8E13 The Mean Six, which we had talked about at length before on a previous occasion, the same occasion where he was such a fan of MLP that it bothered him to see someone who saw so many flaws in it. I practically begged him not to talk about this episode because out of epi in S8, this is the one that upsets me the most and has no redeeming factors.

And then it happens…

In order to justify Twilight’s and her clone’s actions in this episode that I asked him not to talk about that was already a source of conflict in a previous conversation, Tee tries to reference events in the movie. I interrupt him, which I don’t normally do, and tell him what I explained above: that we cannot discuss this show as one contiguous and logical history, because all of my contempt toward the show originates from the fact that it is absolutely not a logical contiguous history. I further told him that I was willing to not only be civil but enthusiastic about discussing the show providing he did not cross this one line.

So of course, he insisted on crossing that line immediately as if I hadn’t said anything…

Using only examples from the show before the movie, I proceeded to destroy the movie’s credibility as a logical extension of causality from prior events in the series. Using logic and more examples, I proceeded to annihilate every hope of an excuse he had of rationalizing the sequence of events from that point to this, finishing by reiterating that because there are so many writers who do not care about the characters or the setting following logical causality, it is not possible for the two of us, who naturally think in terms of logical causality and character development, to discuss this series without cherry picking our preferred interpretation of practically infinite contradictory points.

CONCLUSION

After that, it seemed like Tee was done talking about ponies and we moved on to other things, but you know… This was what I expected to happen. I didn’t want it to happen this way, and I really did go above and beyond to reach out to my friend’s interests in a way that we could both enjoy. If I would have said, “No, I’m just done with the show; it’s too painful for me”, he would have held it over my head continuing to snap at me and blaming me claiming that I wasn’t being friendly or nice to just let him talk about his interests, but then I do watch the show, invite him to discuss his favorite parts with me, and lo and behold! He has almost nothing to say, that is - until there is a chance to argue.

Tee, and I sincerely hope you are reading this: you and I both have judgmental personalities, you have made it clear that you hold a lot of anger for those who have heaped upon you unfair demands despite what you have tried to provide, yet here you are making demands of me and not being satisfied until you have encountered resistance that proves that not only have I done this thing you ask but that I also care about it, and then you try to force me into your interpretation. This is a very bullheaded way of interacting with people that most people today call “being a bully”.

You probably think I’m mad at you; I’m not. You helped me find a way to enjoy what was there instead of devaluing the show for not living up to what it should have been, but I cannot help but see that just as it happened for myself, the reason some people don’t like you anymore is that you were not charitable toward them. You, like I, cannot change the fact that you have a judgmental personality, but you can and you should judge your own actions by the same measure that you judge others. If you do this in a similar way to I, it should lead to greater satisfaction.