Soapbox time, where the fandom expresses its opinions! As always, we are open for submissions on these. If you'd like to submit your own soapbox, hit up this post for infos.
As always, these are the opinions of fandom members, not us here at EQD.
Have some headlines:
- Friendship is Magic Was Only Popular Because the Ponies Were Appealing
- It’s Time We Acknowledge Tell Your Tale
- State of the Soapbox
Friendship is Magic Was Only Popular Because the Ponies Were Appealing
By: Havana
By: Havana
I see a lot of people say how they got into pony for the "plot" jokingly and it has always made me wonder, would Friendship is Magic have been anywhere near as successful if we didn't have that specific character model?
Personally, I don't think it would have. If we went back in time 14 years and had Lauren Faust swap her pony model for G1 models, this show would have been a 1-2 season flop on Discover Family watched by kids but largely ignored by everyone else. The style of the ponies was absolutely everything.
Even if people cite the storylines and writing as huge wins, they've always been pretty basic. The world was interesting, but so was G1's world if you go back and watch. It was a Dungeons and Dragons style setting with ponies. They even had some "jokes for adults" that people always cite for why they watch the show. They just weren't anime eyed with curvy butts like G4, so they never spawned a weird adult fanbase that spread it around like crazy with fan art and fanfics.
We even see this pretty clearly with G5 ponies. They removed the butts and made the eyes smaller, then with TYT removed much of the appeal G4's style had by making their faces more characture looking rather than muted like FiM. The result? Much less hype. G4 ponies still dominate the fandom's creative side, and when we do use G5 ponies for things, they are converted into more appealing styles by artists.
Anyway, thanks for reading. I know this opinion is controversial, but considering how ..."enthusiastic" people are about G4 ponies in fan art, I feel like it's silly to not think this is probably a huge reason why it's still popular and ever was popular to begin with.
It’s Time We Acknowledge Tell Your Tale
By Hawk Nightwing
By Hawk Nightwing
Hey, everypony. Welcome to my first ever Soapbox. Today, we need to talk about Tell Your Tale, and why I believe it deserves a lot more recognition from fans than it currently does now. Currently, the primary stance I’ve seen from people is that Generation 5 as a whole is over, hence why the boatload of “retrospectives” that are popping up. But there’s a problem with that, isn’t there? Being the flagship show for two years straight, I do understand why Make Your Mark would be treated as the the most important show out of the two that exist. It was on Netflix, the same as the movie, and shared the same animation style. It’s also just way better in general, at least in my opinion. However, with the heavy focus on MYM being the only series you should pay attention to by a ton of reviewers, that unfortunately leaves Tell Your Tale to get the shaft. And to that I have to ask…why? Yes, the episodes are only five minutes, but they are also important to the story being told and offer a lot more development for our main characters. Episodes that focus on Sunny’s arc like “Alicorn Issues” or “Mission Imponable” come to mind in this regard. Or any episode focused on Misty in the latter half of Season 1, which is a vast improvement over the first half.
You don’t just take half the story and attempt to judge the whole book that way. As a writer, this irks me because both shows are telling the same story, and we as a community are effectively ignoring one in order to prop up the other. G5 is not “over” because TYT exists as the focus show now, and people have to realize the inherent fallacy of that logic. Season 2 has improved the series a ton and has committed to an overarching plot, a better realized arc for Sunny, fantastic character development for Misty, redeeming characters that were once treated like dirt, such as Posey and Sparky, etc. Tell Your Tale deserves your attention. It deserves a second chance. I don’t want us to cast aside this show and treat it as just a collection of “shorts” due to the runtime. Bluey had similar short episodes and do we dismiss it? No! It’s taking over the world. And that is the inherent contradiction at play here. Because of its status as a YouTube webseries, people tend to ignore it. But we shouldn’t. Tell Your Tale deserves far more attention than it currently gets now, and I’m tired of pretending that ignoring it is okay. If you’re someone who was turned off by the first season, give the show another shot with Season 2. Look at it with an open mind. I’ve been repeatedly blown away by this season so far, and I feel like this needs to be said. The show deserves to be treated with the same level of attention as Make Your Mark was, and I intend to demonstrate that fact. We need more people to examine Tell Your Tale as an art form, as a full on show that deserves watching.
This hasn’t been the first time we’ve had a 3D movie and a 2D flagship show. Tangled and Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure is one such example, and a switch in animation style is perfectly fine. At this point, I like the TYT art style. I think the only thing bothering me about it before was Izzy and Hitch’s design. But everypony else looks good. And the stories are very well told now as well. This series has found its footing, and as fans, we have to acknowledge that improvement. We need to see the show for what it is, and acknowledge its place as the sole carrier of G5’s story. You don’t just ignore the next chapter of an ongoing story expect to form an objective analysis on that story as a whole. Like it or not, this generation is here to stay. It never left, and it is time that we acknowledge the WHOLE story that it’s telling; every messy, beautiful part of it.
State of the Soapbox
By: Alan Back
By: Alan Back
I've been checking in on the Community Soapbox every now and then since its debut on Equestria Daily, and I'm starting to get a bit concerned. Not about the idea behind it; I'm all for giving people a chance to voice their opinions in a format longer than the typical Disqus comment. I wrote my share of letters to the editor while I was in college, and I approached them with the goal of laying out a concise, carefully reasoned argument to support my position.
Some of the pieces aren’t of the best grammatical quality, but that doesn't really bother me either at this point. A good proofreader or copy editor can help on that front.
My biggest concern stems from seeing Soapbox pieces that appear not to have any basis in reality. Case in point: the “Friendship is Magic Season 10 like Dragon Ball Super” piece in the post that went up on June 16. The writer's lead-off sentence was: “Hasbro has said Friendship is Magic is getting a season 10 as a show in the future.” As far as I know, Hasbro has made no such announcement; I certainly don't recall seeing anything about it on EQD, which would surely have jumped all over that sort of news.
The best commentaries are those that use current/historical events or trends as a starting point and build from there. Maybe they draw parallels with other events that aren't immediately obvious. Maybe they explore cultural/political/philosophical influences at work. Maybe they play "what-if" and offer speculation on what might happen next. But they all start from the facts. Anything that doesn't is a pure fabrication from one end to the other, as the June 16 Soapbox piece appears to be.
Uncritically accepting hearsay and word-of-mouth statements as truth without examining them is dangerous. It's all too easy for rumors to spread out of control and reach the point where trying to debunk them is fruitless. (See the current political situation in the US.) Just as with news reports, the claims at the heart of a letter or column need to be thoroughly checked for accuracy at every step, from researching to writing to editing to reading. It’s true at every level from the New York Times down to our little neck of the digital woods. Always has been, always will be.
