It’s Over, Even If It Isn’t · 6:13am Sep 24th, 2018
I love sad music because it makes me slow down and reflect on how beautiful things really are, and every bit of sad music that I have collected, I have understood and been able to relate it to something in my life or understand on a deeper level. Everything except one song. I liked it because it sounded sad even though I couldn’t relate to the words at all… until two days ago, just a little while after posting my previous Blog, because I was letting my music shuffle while I was thinking.
As the music played, I’ve thought about just how long I have hurt, just how long I have held resentment for what should have happened with MLP but didn’t, and no, I’m not speaking of what happened in the show – I’m speaking of what should have happened to the people watching it. As my sad music played, I realized that I didn’t want to give the show any credence until it returned to being completely about teaching lessons of the heart. I didn’t even like the show until I was shown in the glorious first season, that it was teaching lessons of the heart. I wanted to believe if I and others rejected the nonsense in total there would be a return to teaching lessons of the heart and all these mixed moral messages would be stricken from the canon.
I felt so betrayed when the show rapidly turned away from that purpose. I was inconsolable for years, literally years, because for the first time since my youngest of days, I had reason to believe the world could become something beautiful if this kept going.
Because of a friend whom I thought wanted to geekout about the show, I learned to watch it without being angry for what it was supposed to be. With this song playing, I sat and reflected. After eight years, earth has not become a better place because of My Little Pony, but I realized that part of what I feared was that the misleading messages that were introduced seven years ago would poison humanity, bring it to a level below where MLP had started. I have a giggle now wondering sarcastically if the worst people that come to mind have ever watched the show.
Ultimately, no, maybe it saved a few souls, mine wasn’t the one needing saving, but I acted like it was. I finally gave up ownership, gave up all notions that how I feel about this show has any impact on others. My own anger fought the very core of the thing that I wanted to happen.
I never understood this song because I thought he was singing about a person who had died. Up until now, I really didn’t understand that it was something inside of him that had died. Maybe you understand what I am saying, maybe you don’t, but please listen now and understand what I am feeling:
..this bring up question about how big impact those arts (films, cartoons, books...slogans) actually have? And impact here not only emotional or intellectual impact, but impact leading to changes in behavior ... It seems any media today have much lesser impact on the world than it was (secretely?) hoped by its creator(s), partially because actually living things differently cost quite a lot of effort..and if 99% of other humans around you not ready to make this effort..things mostly remain the same, probably with one more broken human..
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For myself, It mattered a great deal.
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Hm, well, in coming years (decades) we will see how many humans will pop up and say 'yes, this specific bit of my childhood helped me ..to actually implement something unusual, socially-speaking'.
I don't know, for me rift between season 1 and other five seasons was not that bad, but I come from quite different place and time. My probably biggest worry about all this - how many humans will survive this threshold between 'childhood' and 'adult life', even if you somehow manage to set them up right, or they themselves will aim themselves at becoming 'more ponies-type of humans than current mass of humans'? Because, behind sadly very coloriful (sadly because it hard to imagine you live in brightly-colored dystopia, partially because it was colored differently in all those arts from your childhood :} :| :( ) front-page of humanity, things are not quite humane...
Also, my smaller (?) worry tend to be about unintentional re-normalization of something already way too normalized (and wrong). Well, at least ponies don't kill and eat pigs and co, a bit of (welcoming) modernity!
I came across a comic that made me laugh that directly relates to the notion of trying to improve humanity. It's from the brilliant 'Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal' by Zack Weinersmith:
smbc-comics.com/comics/1561898934-20190630.png
I think MLP:FIM touched many people in a positive way. But I think some fanfiction did far more. In that way, MLP acted as a catalyst for others who affected greater change than the show itself perhaps could.
Personal growth, I reason, uses the same rules as taking hallucinogens: Set, Setting and Catalyst. The mindset must be positive, the setting safe and inspiring, and the catalyst must be appropriate to the learning. The show often failed one or more of these, but the many writers and artists made up for that.
Perhaps it might help to think of the value of Pony not as the show, but as the fandom it created - MLP was more than what it was created to be, and that is fine, too. Or so I think.
I often think earth is a hell, and nothing is close to perfect here. I find it a major success if anything even mildly positive ever occurs at all...
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Sometimes I wonder how exactly version of 'pony show' may look if you were writing script? I think traditional animation still quite time-consuming even for short titles, but may be this virtual (VR for you and PeachClover, just 3d for me ...for example) filmmaking still can be used? May be just one scene from "[The] Taste of grass" for example?
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I wish.