Help! My Heart is Full of Pony! - Bad Apologies · 8:50pm Sep 7th, 2022
I've written extensively about the social commentary in My Little Pony: A New Generation and My Little Pony: Make Your Mark. Personally, I love the direction that they're going in - calling out xenophobia, placing social justice at the forefront of both the story and the universe.
Prejudice, in Maretime Bay, is no mere interpersonal problem; it's an entire industry. This economy of fear allowed Sprout to easily seize the reins of existing power structures, and impose martial law. In Make your Mark, we see residual prejudices, even after the three pony races have become friends. Posey meddles. Posey uses her position as an earth pony in a majority earth pony town to cast suspicion on other races, and engage in the worst possible Karen-like behavior.
These parallels to our own world run deeper than mere ponified pop culture references, and has the potential to make for very interesting storytelling.
However, with more mature themes and subject matter comes greater social responsibility. A lot of people want to see Sprout reformed, but that could lead to a tangled mess of unintentional messaging. Sprout was written as a parallel to fascism, and to soften that could be deeply problematic.
Then there's the ending to Make Your Mark. Once the earth ponies discover magic of their own, Posey apologizes to Sunny for her awful behavior, and confesses that she had been acting out of jealousy.
Sunny responds by...apologizing too???
In media meant for small children, this is not uncommon, and in fact, largely part of the formula, but it really has no place here. Given the context of what was happening, Posey was apologizing for being a racist, and Sunny and Friends apologized, in turn, for having the audacity to exist.
While, of course, no offense was intended here, by inserting the "everybody apologizes" formula into a rather adult situation where only one party was at fault, Make Your Mark ends up making a deeply messed up statement.
I don't expect Make Your Mark to be perfect. It's going to falter rather a lot - especially at first - but it has a lot of things going for it, both with the setting and the premise. I love the idea of Detective Zipp investigating Equestria's past - attempting to answer the very questions that have been burning in our minds ever since G5 revealed that it took place in a future where friendship in Equestria had collapsed. I'm excited to see who this alicorn villainess is, and why she cackles so evilly. I look forward to seeing more of Maretime Bay, and the characters that, in a very short time, I've grown quite fond of.
I do, however, hope that the writing team learns to be a little less tone deaf, and to handle the serious subject matter that's already woven into the fabric of the story a bit more carefully.
There's less than a month to go before the next installation of Make Your Mark. We wait with bated breath.
-Sprocket.
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"A lot of people want to see Sprout reformed, but that could lead to a tangled mess of unintentional messaging. Sprout was written as a parallel to fascism, and to soften that could be deeply problematic."
Hm. Oof, aye, that's a tricky one; I don't think I'd thought of it that way before.
Looking at his situation, as know to me at the moment, at least, from a strictly Watsonian perspective, certainly, he did things bad enough to need a redemption, but not so bad, in context, to make one particularly tricky. The legendary paragon Twilight Sparkle, after all, accepted the friendship and redemption of Discord and Starlight Glimmer.
And I tend to mostly look at this sort of thing from Watsonian perspectives.
Buuuuut, yeah, if one brings a Doylist perspective into this, looks at what Sprout's actions may out-of-universe symbolize/parallel-on-smaller-scale... Well, maybe one could say that the redemption could also symbolize something larger. Problematic, not impossible. I think it could be done well at least in fanfic, here, being read in literate detail by at least fairly mature adults.
But to put it into mass-market television aimed at children... Hm.
Yeah, I'd, IIRC, been surprised and wondering why there didn't seem to be any hint of canon redemption yet, but I now have a new hypothesis as to why; thanks.
"Sunny responds by...apologizing too???"
...I don't think I thought much of that at the time, either, now that you mention it.
(Though that may be because I tend to myself overapologize, so perhaps apologies like that are less likely to stand out to me?)
And aye, I do hope the show goes well, too!
5684822
...
Yeah...
After Luna I'd imagine pretty much holding onto any resentment would seem sort of petty... Not, mind, he shouldn't be held accountable for his actions, but justice should be about symmetry, not revenge.
Of course, on the other hand... maybe witholding such things might be more prudent in some cases
5686453
...Why are you quoting me when the only text you quote was me quoting Sprocket? I'm confused.
5686627
... Whoops. I missed that. Sorry mate
Force of habit, I'm used to engaging with you
5686778
Heh, no problem. :)