Expect these posts normally every Tuesday at 2:00 PM PST. To submit your own, see this post.
Note: These soapboxes do not at all reflect the ideas of EQD. They are an open forum for anyone to post whatever crazy theory they want.
- Is Wearing Rose-Colored Glasses While Watching The Show Wrong?
- Disabled Characters in MLP
- Can ponies live without Cutie Marks?
- Story Potential Pushed Aside
- Pony Nature
And get your soapboxes below!
Is Wearing Rose-Colored Glasses While Watching The Show Wrong?
By: Jeffrey
Ever since I have started to watching the show I never criticized anything about it. Then when I started to become more involved in the fandom I realized that people criticized the show a lot. While people continued to be negative about the show I decided to remain optimistic while watching the show. But because of my optimistic view for the show people start to get mad at me and the other people who love everything about the show. They start blaming us for the reason why the show isn't good anymore and accuse us for not pointing out the things they consider bad in the show which leads them to insulting us and try to not make us optimistic anymore. But it never works.
So my question is what is the big deal about watching the show through Rose-Colored Glasses? I never even heard of this term until someone called me out on my optimism and accused me of wearing these glasses. I always love commenting about my excitement about a new episode or the new MLP comic but then get told that I shouldn't be happy about a certain thing or get told to explain why I love the certain thing just to get a comment saying why my reasons aren't actually reasons and get every single line in my previous comment highlighted and that person would try to prove every single thing I said wrong. I know that criticism is helpful to improve something but what if I don't have any actual criticism for the show and actually love every single thing in it? Is it really bad to just be happy about everything in the show?
Disabled Characters in MLP
By: AspieFluttershy
I see a lot of headcanons that X character is autistic, OCD, dyslexic, etc. It makes me wish MLP had characters with disabilities or neurodivergencies (like autism and dyslexia). Some of you might be saying that Derpy and Scootaloo count, or that Make A Wish character, but the first two are unproven and the third was a special case and background character. There are a lot of children and adults with disabilities and neurodivergencies who watch this show, and I think having an established character be confirmed to have one, or introducing a new character with one, would send a much-needed message of inclusion. But if such a character were introduced, they should not fall into stereotypes. Their disability should be a part of who they are, but not define them. They shouldn't be a prodigy because of their disability. Though they could use it to their advantage in some situations, they should not be portrayed as having no issues at all. I know the writers at MLP can pull it off, and for the sake of their target audience as well as the brony fandom, I hope they do.
Pony Nature
By: Fluttershypegasus
Is pony nature good or evil?
Let's look at some of the villains-Nightmare Moon seems evil -she wants to cause eternal night! However, we discover that Luna did not act out of spite or malice-she had fears and insecurities that bubbled up until she was taken over by Nightmare Moon; at her core, she was a good person.
A similar thing can be said of Starlight Glimmer-her villainy stemmed from an upsetting childhood experience. Even though some might say she could have reacted differently, if this event outside of her control had not happened she would not have turned evil. She too, turned out to be ultimately good.
The only exception (ignoring the comics) seems to be King Sombra, however, we know very little about his past and when we see him, he was more of a tenebrous shade, twisted by dark magic, than a pony, so he can be ignored.
So if we look at the main pony villains, we might conclude that their nature is fundamentally good in that they were ultimately lead down a bad path by factors beyond their control. However, to find a less pure, and unsettlingly familiar, aspect to pony nature, we must look at far less threatening characters, Gladmane and Flim & Flam.
These are all characters that seem to act as antagonists, not because they were misguided or mistaken, but because they placed their own greed above everything else. Even when Flim & Flam dethroned Gladmane, they did it only to make a profit. This, I think, shows us a stark reminder of our own humanity: so much real evil stems from greed. I would even go as far as to call Flim and Flam some of the most human characters in the whole series. Overall, I do think pony nature is very noble and positive, but there's imperfections everywhere and in everything...
Can ponies live without Cutie Marks?
By: They're back, He's back, jack jackson
We have seen many background ponies that don’t have Cutie Marks most of the time these are simple animation errors, but two in particular are named and and consistently don’t have CMs. These ponies are Tote Bag(a sad Diamond Tiara servant) and the “Puller Ponies”(4 or 5 named stallions that work various odd jobs in Equestria but mostly pull some kind of cart usually train ones). Their lack of cutie marks are not animation errors which brings up the idea of ponies that don’t find their true purpose in life and if these ponies are any indication then ponies like this don’t succeed and have the lowest positions in equestrian society capable only of physical labor. My only gripe with the S5 finale was that we didn't get to see the Mane six’s lives without cutie marks so it would be interesting to see either Starlight or the CMC explore this idea
Story Potential Pushed Aside
By: MegaSean45
We've seen moments of MLP that we expected sequels from, but didn't yet. The first one I want to mention is Fluttershy's fear and fascination of dragons. I know I mentioned this kinda in a past post, but Fluttershy took an interest in Spike in the very first episode, and then we realized she had a fear of dragons in Dragonshy which she... kinda conquered... but she's still afraid of packs of them as shown in Dragon Quest. We still don't know why or how she takes fascinations and fears of them.
Next is another post I mentioned in the past: Babs Seed and the Manehattan CMCs. Bloom and Gloom didn't cut it for me (no pun intended) - Babs got her cutie mark, and we know how and why, but her story is not yet finished. We still haven't met the Manehattan CMCs, and we don't know Babs' life in the Manehattan CMCs, or whether or not she's still with them.
Next, we have Lightning Dust. Her head-pony status was taken away, and then... what? Is she still in the Wonderbolt Academy? If not, what's her plan next? Does Wind Rider have anything to do with her?
And finally, we have Peewee. Spike found him, he spent time with him, and he returned him to his parents. Now that should've been an episode instead of seeing pictures, and we'd probably see some development on Spike's emotions on him never meeting his parents.
Now can any of these still happen in the show? Yes, they can! Future episodes showing and explaining what's next, or even flashback episodes explaining what happened! Writers, I hope you're seeing this! You left some stories hanging that should be finished! ;) It's not too late until the show ends!
