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VitalSpark

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    Let's be honest, is FiM a preschool show?

    in MLP:FiM Canon Discussion

    · Edited by Vital Spark

    For ages 2-11?!  What mental defective came up with that?

     

    Certainly there is stuff that is popular with 2 year olds that 11 year olds wouldn't like. And vice versa. But there's also plenty of stuff that is equally popular with 2 year olds and 11 year olds. Chocolate is an obvious example.

     

    It makes perfect sense to talk about a show appealing to 2-11 year olds.

     

    My son, who turned 4 a couple of weeks ago, likes My Little Pony. My niece, who is 3, does too. So does my 5 year old daughter. And so do I, and I'm 34.

     

    (Incidentally I was talking to my son about Hello Kitty this evening and he said he doesn't like it because it's for girls. I asked if he thought My Little Pony was for girls, or for boys, and he said "it's for boys and girls".)

    What's your favorite joke?

    in General Discussion

    Man walks into a bar and pauses: at the other end of the bar, there's this guy with a big orange head. Just kind of sitting there, mooning into his drink. So the man asks the bartender, "Say, what's up with the guy with the big orange head?" And the bartender says, "It's an interesting story. Buy him a drink and maybe he'll tell it to you."

    So the man walks over and introduces himself and offers to buy a round. The guy with the big orange head says, "Yeah, I'll bet you want to know the story, huh?" To which the man replies, "Sure, if you don't mind."

    The man with the big orange head sighs and says, "You know, I've gone over it in my mind a million times. Basically, it's like this: I was walking along the beach one day, when I stubbed my toe on something. I looked down, and there was an antique brass lamp. I picked it up and dusted it off a little -- when all of a sudden this enormous genie pops out!

    "The genie thundered, 'You have released me from my ten-thousand year imprisonment, and I am in your debt. I will grant you three wishes as a token of my gratitude.'

    The man at the bar is agape. The guy with the big orange head continues: "So I said, 'Wow, okay. Well, my first wish is to be fantastically wealthy.'

    "The genie says, 'Your wish is granted.' And all of a sudden I have rings on my fingers and a crown on my head, and my wallet is full of money and a dozen ATM cards and the deed to a mansion in the hills -- I mean, I was loaded!

    "So I said, 'Amazing! Okay, for my next wish , I want to be married to the most beautiful woman in the world.'

    "The genie says, 'Your wish is granted.' And the ocean parts, and out walks this gorgeous woman in this beautiful dress, and she takes my hand and we fall in love and the genie marries us right there. It was incredible.

    "The genie booms, 'You have one wish remaining.'"

    The man with the big orange head pauses and sips his beer. He says, "Now, you know, this may be where I went wrong. I wished for a big orange head."

    What did you have for breakfast?

    in General Discussion

    · Edited by Vital Spark

    I want to try Pop Tarts they sound so good! We have none in England 

     

    Nonsense. They're made by Kelloggs and sold in most supermarkets. I've just checked the Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Waitrose, and Sainsbury's websites. They all sell pop tarts.

     

    They're horrible. Like soggy toast filled with jam that's hotter than the surface of the sun.

    • Brohoof 1

    MLP in my schoolwork?

    in General Discussion

    · Edited by Vital Spark

    The creepy thing is that it's not just a coincidence.

     

    All the big advertising companies track which sites you visit. (They have ads on those sites, so when you visit the sites, their server records a log of you requesting a banner image. This is how they know which sites you've visited.) Thus they figure out what adverts to target to you.

     

    On the topic of MLP in work, I did include some MLP-related examples in a talk I gave about object-oriented programming to around 90 people last weekend.

    • Brohoof 4

    Let's be honest, is FiM a preschool show?

    in MLP:FiM Canon Discussion

    · Edited by Vital Spark

    No. Preschool shows do not have plot or timeline or awesome villains. They are usually educational for people around that age, often to learn to read or count or to say something. Pre school shows are nothing like Friendship is Magic.

     

    I think you maybe haven't watched many pre-school shows recently. They're not all about singing the alphabet.

    • Tree Fu Tom has a target audience of 2 to 6 year olds. It has plots, and villains (the mushas), though I'll leave it to you to judge whether they're awesome villains or not. Most episodes are stand-alone, but some do refer back to earlier episodes, creating something of a timeline. The first couple of seasons had David Tennant too. :-)
    • Topsy and Tim has a slightly older target audience. Probably around 3 or 4 to 6. It's pretty much a soap opera for kids, so it very much has a timeline. The plot line of them deciding to move house, looking around new houses, selling their old house, and packing up their stuff, ran for the whole first season (25 episodes I think?). At the beginning of the season, Tim's best friend's mum is pregnant, and later on in the season she has a baby. There are other multi-episode story arcs too (the cardboard box, the school play, etc). Definite timeline. The first episode of the second season has them moving into their new house, and as the season progresses, deals with Topsy and Tim starting school.
    • Katie Morag probably has a similar target audience to Topsy & Tim, though I hear the next season is going to be aimed at a slightly older audience. It also has a timeline. Her teacher leaves in one episode, and she gets a new teacher a couple of episodes later. Her mum has a baby. Katie's neighbour falls in love with Katie's grandmother, and they get married in a two-part finale.
    • Old Jack's Boat has villains, Kitty Cutlass being the most regular antagonist. The Christmas special even dealt with the implied death of Jack's wife. (Old Jack's Boat is a pretty awesome kids' show for anyone who is a fan of Doctor Who. It stars Bernard Cribbins and Freema Agyeman, and some episodes were written by Russell T Davies, including the aforementioned Christmas special.)

    Just looking at the CBeebies TV schedule for this morning, out of 27 shows broadcast this morning between 6am and noon, only four are what would be called "traditionally educational" (i.e. reading, writing, and arithmetic). Which is not to say that the other 23 will not teach children anything - many of them do - but it's things like not to be afraid of thunder and lightning, or not to be upset when you drop your favourite book in the bath and it gets ruined.

     

    Men don't watch preschool shows.

     

    Speak for yourself. I do. Plenty of dads do. Some of the ones I mentioned above are actually rather good.

     

     

    There are less preschoolers than grown adults who watch the show.

     

    Preschool fans are (unsurprisingly) not very active on this forum.

     

    Yet there are a lot of them.

    • Brohoof 2

    Let's be honest, is FiM a preschool show?

    in MLP:FiM Canon Discussion

    The main target audience seems to be girls at pre-school and primary school age. However, the writers recognised that it's also important to cater to the parents of the target audience, as they're going to end up watching it anyway.
     
    Why is this important? My kids like My Little Pony, and my kids like Cloudbabies. I like My Little Pony, but I frickin hate Cloudbabies. Do you want to guess which show I encourage the kids to watch? Do you want to guess which small plastic toys I'm more likely to buy for the kids?
     
    My Little Pony is certainly not the first cartoon to recognise the importance of parents as a secondary audience. There's a whole bunch of examples at ParentalBonus and ParentService at TV tropes.
     

    However, I will say this. The show is most likely growing with its audience, the 2-11 year old girls who watched the show almost 4 years ago, are now probably 6-14 years old, part of that age range has already grew out of the original target audience. So if the writers want those older girls to tune in, as well as keep the younger kids happy, then they're going to have to tweak the show's scale and structure a bit.

    Why change a winning formula to try to hold on to departing fans when there are a brand new batch of 2 year olds every year?

    • Brohoof 2

    Do you think any of the Mane 6 (or anyone else) have any mental disorders?

    in MLP:FiM Canon Discussion

    In my opinion, the mane 6 are all within the normal range (with one possible exception).

     

    Twilight Sparkle is particular, yes, but not anywhere near obsessive enough to call it a disorder.

     

    Fluttershy is shy, but shows too much empathy for the other characters to have any kind of autistic spectrum disorder. (A key feature of autism is the inability to recognise or understand other people's emotions.)

     

    Pinkie Pie could possibly be diagnosed with cyclothymic disorder, which is a mild form of bipolar disorder. So that's the possible exception.

     

    Outside of the mane 6, Trixie is a sociopath, but Derpy I think probably just has a lazy eye.

    • Brohoof 2
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