May the muffins be forever in your favour.How much attention does our fandom really pay to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic? · 2:02am Oct 22nd, 2018
Yesterday, I had something happen to me that got me thinking, about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and about the reception it gets in the fandom and I decided to talk a bit about it. Afterthoughts on the Finale will still come next week, but today, I want to talk about something else.
There is something I have thought about a lot already in the past five years, but now, I think I can finally address it and find the right words to do so. The question I am asking myself right now is, as the title of this entry already shows:
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How much attention does our fandom really pay to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic?
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We are a very active fandom. We talk a lot about the show, we create a ton of all kinds of different fanwork for it and many of us love to review or analyze the show. However, there are some in the fandom who go a bit farther than that, people who look deep into the different creative elements of an episode, most notably the writing, see flaws and errors there and proceed to point out these things and to downright take an episode apart with criticism. YouTube is full of reviewers who do this and some of them, like Tommy Oliver (previously known as Bronycurious), were even able to earn a nice amount of money via Patreon by critiquing the show in short 5 - 10 minute videos.
Over the years, this has become increasingly popular in the fandom and many followed the examples of the big reviewers, in videos on YouTube or just in text form. And all of the fandom's reviewers, be they big or small, aren't shy to point at something in the show and to call it a "plothole" or some other, random flaw.
I have seen this for a couple of years now and it isn't the first time that I not just disagree with certain, negative views on episodes that get expressed by those reviewers, but that I'm also downright puzzled over certain complaints and openly wonder why anyone would consider this a problem of an episode in the first place. Or in some of the more extreme cases, even how they could misinterpret an episode like this, even though everything is clearly presented. But yesterday, I heard something that was kind of the final straw for me and that motivated me to write this entry.
Yesterday, while I was on the way to a belated Season 8 Finale Meetup and made a short stop at another event that happened before, I met a fellow brony who I've seen a few times in the last years and who I had occasionally talked to in short conversations. We began to talk and obviously, our conversation started to be about the Finale almost immediately. He asked me if I had already watched it and I said "Yes, of course". And instead of being excited over the Finale and praising it, he instantly proceeded with talking about why he doesn't like it. He said "But I don't like the Finale, because they messed up Tartarus!".
Now, I had seen a few bronies online expressing disappointment over it that we didn't get to see as much of Tartarus in the Finale as they would have liked, which is a completely subjective sentiment and the fact we only got to see a small part of it does not constitute a flaw of the episode, so I figured that he thinks that, too. But I asked him what he meant with that, just to get confirmation from him. His answer, though, was surprising. He said: "Yeah, because no one guards Tirek anymore now."
Obviously, this answer got me completely confused, so I asked him how he comes to that conclusion. He answered and told me it's because Cerberus isn't a big, three-headed beast anymore now, but three normal dogs instead, something that he also said about the monsters that are imprisoned in Tartarus.
I immediately realized that he had overlooked something very important at the end of the episode, so I proceeded with asking "Why?" and told him that Cerberus, as well as the monsters, had been turned back to their normal selves when the magic returned at the end.
His reaction on that was complete surprise of his own and he asked "What, really?!". I said "Yes, that was clearly shown at the end." but it did nothing to change his confusion. He was in complete disbelief and acted like this didn't happen at all. It was clear that he, despite having watched the episode, completely missed that this happened.
And right after I witnessed that, I decided to write what I am writing here right now, because even more than many similar experiences I had in our fandom in the past, this made me question how much attention most members in our fandom really pay to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic when they watch an episode.
Of course, this is one guy I'm talking about here. It's entirely possible that he had a bad day while watching the episode and forgot about that moment or that some circumstance happened that distracted him in this very moment when the magic of all the beasts in Tartarus returned.
However, even with these possibilities in mind, it is strange how he didn't seem to have bothered to double-check if what he says about the episode is really accurate and that he just simply proceeded to assume something about the episode that is entirely wrong.
And, as I hinted above, I have seen such things happening in the fandom online many, many times in the last five years, instances where someone talked about an episode and either claimed that something happened that didn't actually happen (or vice versa), or, took a completely wrong conclusion of certain events and then said the episode is bad because of [Insert reason here].
One of these instances even happened just recently, when I read a particular blog entry here that was written by someone else a few days ago:
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I have no idea what we're supposed to make of Neighsay after "School Daze" started him off as a well-intentioned extremist with bigoted views and a lack of a filter, before "Friendship University" turned him into an idiot who would simply rubber stamp any school so long as it was a rival school to Twilight's and met his desires for a "Pony First" environment (even though as head of the EEA it's not about what he wants, it's about what standards the board is looking for, standards that Flim and Flam's school would've never met), and then "School Raze" in the first part had him lock up the student six despite no evidence they were involved in the magic theft
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The author of this blog entry first describes Chancellor Neighsay as a "well-intentioned extremist with bigoted views" and then later proceeds with complaining about it that Neighsay acted exactly like that and did the things you would expect such an extremist to do, by having been so jaded and bent on revenge that he blindy approved another school just to get back at Twilight for letting non-pony students into her school and for standing up to him and the EEA and then having locked up all of the Student Six and taken over Twilight's school when he had a chance to do that because Twilight wasn't here.
This statement sounds like the author completely forgot the plot of "School Daze", as well as Neighsay's personality and characterization, as he complains about the same thing that he just praised moments ago.
There is a commonality between the author of this blog entry and the brony I've talked to yesterday, both of them dislike one or more episodes not because they're bad, but because they overlooked something vital that they need to fully understand the respective episodes and that, if they would have paid attention to it, would have taken care of it that they don't even develop these gripes with the episodes.
Ultimately, this leads to some interesting food for thought:
Maybe a lot, if not all, common complaints about the show or specific episodes stem from it that the ones making the complaints simply did not pay sufficient attention to what they were watching before making their judgements.
I think you may have a point here. I know there are some members of this site who claim to not really have watched any new episodes for years now, I wonder if they are forming their opinions of new content based on those 5-10 minute takedown/reviews on YouTube, and thus missing key details.
You have a Point and that was what i meant, many are bothered with a foal in tartarus. And frankly, i can't help but Think that our fandom will Continue to exist After g4 ends
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That is possible. However, I mostly notice this behavior with people who do still watch the show and follow a new season. I see many who complain about an episode in a way that sounds like they merely glanced over it.
I also suspect that a lot of people only watch an episode once before making up their minds about it, even though there are a lot of details you'll only get after repeated watching.
It's a troublesome behavior, because it leads to a lot of unfair judgement of the show by these people.
4957130 I think it depends on what kind of stance you take. I don't blame anyone on this site for watching an episode, deciding they don't like it after a single viewing, and then not coming back to it. But if you're going to have these detailed reviews and rants where you try to pick apart the plot and the setting, you need to watch the episode several times to make sure you grasp what you're talking about.