Time to Learn · 6:49am Jan 29th, 2022
I foresee a future where I think "Why did I already use that blog title? It would be better for this issue!"
But I don't care what Future Borg thinks. Let them suffer; they deserve it anyway for what they did to their future self back in the present.
Anyway, let's talk about MLP Generations #3 rather than getting wrapped up in petty fights.
It's a dangerous moral, but the lesson I see here is that you shouldn't let your desire to avoid snap, unfair, and perhaps even prejudiced decisions blind you to actual clear evidence of a problem. The good-faith faculty of of the School of Friendship have every reason to attribute at least the students' attitude problems to the new professors, but seem determined to not lay blame on them (though admittedly we can probably attribute Pinkie's hostile response to Twilight noticing something was off to Violet's Smooze influence). And since they don't blame the new professors, the students continue to grow ever more problematic, and the faculty certainly don't consider investigating whether there's a connection between the known cause of problems at the school and the problems that started outside of the school at approximately the same time.
And the other moral is that safety first means you should wear safety goggles while using chemistry to identify a mystery substance, and you should not attempt to identify the mystery substance by tasting it. Honestly, I just don't think Twilight was paying attention in school when they covered magical safety, because she just keeps making these sorts of mistakes.
Unfortunately, I don't think Pinkie is right in her metaphor about knots and blame. Sure, in and of themselves solving a problem is more important than assigning blame for it, but they're not independent activities. If all you do is untangle the knot without seeking any deeper understanding, you should expect that the string will probably get tangled again. This is of course better than the converse approach of just pointing fingers without actually trying to solve the problem, but that doesn't make either of them a good plan. You must both diagnose the root cause and implement a corresponding solution if you want to claim you've really solved a problem.
Violet Shiver sure seems to be enjoying crafting and compliments. I think she may have forgotten that she's on the decorations committee to spy and undermine and that Pinkie's not supposed to be her friend.
Of course, that begs the question of what one can do for a s'mony who wants to be friendly and doesn't want to incite strife among those they come into contact with.
I just want to ask: how did Spike manage to glue his tail to lantern? It's not like his tail is just flopping around randomly like it's made of hair.
I mean, it's got to be Spike; Twilight doesn't seem to have a tail emergency to deal with (and is too meticulous to glue things to her tail) and everypony else we see is not on lantern duty, but Pinkie says that Spike is in the room and working on lanterns and we should probably trust her word on that.
It would certainly explain a lot.
Mark my words, if they do go for a reformation here, it's going to be Violet Shiver. Note how her character design is default pony, without any of the sinister twists of her compatriots. But yeah, the faculty has to be deliberately avoiding the obvious answer on this one. It's the only way this storyline makes even a semblance of sense. That or Smooze interferes with basic logic skills.