Nyactis Mewcis Catlum

They're fictional ponies, so not really. But I don't really tend to find a lot of fictional characters attractive, ponies or not.

Oh, I like nicknames, don't me wrong, but it feels really strange when people force it in to their fics. Then again, I guess it depends on the nickname. If it's a character I can sincerely see would nickname people, I let it pass, but for those who don't it's out of place. There's also something that occurs a lot in misattributing nicknames one character gave to another (an example of this would be Sonic calling Shadow "Faker" first and most often, but the fanon likes to make it out like Shadow was the one who gave Sonic the nickname), and it kind of takes away from the original significance the nickname had.

EDIT: This is what's said after the line, by the way - Scootaloo: Why? Rainbow Dash: Ugh! It's just my parents and I have a delicate relationship. I love them very much, and we're really close, but there's a reason I didn't tell them I'm a Wonderbolt! They can be a little bit... embarrassing. Scootaloo: Huh? Really? Rainbow Dash: Yeah, really! And now you've invited a whole lot of crazy into my life! Scootaloo: What's wrong with a little support? So I was combing through some MLP: FiM episodes for the sake of the other thread that I started, and I stumbled upon this strange line: Rainbow Dash: Yeah. You should've warned me that you were bringing my parents! Or talked to Twilight or something! Not just shown up! Now, I remember thinking it was a little odd when I first watched the episode, but I entirely forgot about it until just now. Why Twilight? It's oddly specific. Anyone have any idea what she means by this? Why would Scootaloo talk to Twilight about...her parents? And no, context doesn't make this any clearer: Rainbow Dash: Okay, yeah! Uh, great practice! I'll, uh, eh, catch up with you guys in a minute! Fleetfoot: Sir, you really raised a great flyer! Bow Hothoof: Oh, no! [straining] Tears... welling up again! Rainbow Dash: Dad! Bow Hothoof: [continues sobbing] [camera flashes] Rainbow Dash: Could you give us a sec? Scootaloo: Is something wrong?

Rainbow for sure calls Twilight 'Twilight' every time. No I totally don't know that because I'm a total TwiDash nerd Interestingly, I don't think any character has called her Sparkle unless it was derogatory in some way. Another interesting thing - while Scootaloo always calls Rainbow by her full name, she doesn't do the same for her parents. Scootaloo: Bow and Windy, I'd like you to meet Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle.

It wouldn't be surprising if I'm the only one who cares about this because of my little writer heart, but I've always liked to look into mannerisms of speaking of characters, and I think it says a lot about how characters feel each other depending on what they call each other. It bothers me, probably more than it should, when I read a fic where a character calls the other character by a part of their name/nickname that they've never called them before. Pony names are special because their naming convention is...strange. "Rainbow Dash"? Is Dash her last name, or her first? And what about "Fluttershy"? I was combing through some episodes to figure out what Rainbow and Scootaloo call each other. I know for a fact Twilight just calls Rainbow by, well, 'Rainbow' a good majority of the time. Interestingly, though, Scootaloo calls Rainbow by 'Rainbow Dash' nearly every appearance I've looked at. I'm not done yet, but the notable episodes I've combed through are "Sleepless in Ponyville" and "Parental Glideance". Also, Applejack calls Rainbow by her full name in that, but I know she's also referred to her as both 'Rainbow' and 'Dash' individually. (Also, 'Scoots' is canon... Sort of. Rainbow calls Scootaloo 'Scoot' in "Sleepless in Ponyville". Generally, though, she calls her by her full name and/or 'kid'. idr how much she uses 'squirt' but she hasn't in the episodes I've looked at so far.) (Also, remember when people thought 'Apple Jack' was two words? Good times.) So what do you guys think? Sorry, this post is pretty disorganized, but I'm basically wondering if other people are interested in this sort of thing, and what you think dictates what other characters call each other. I'll share more things I find along the way.

To be fair, you do have a point here. I definitely found myself laughing at 28PL more than I did MMDW. I just think the things it did wrong, it did worse than MMDW did. Honestly, that cake prank is actually amazing. If I could pull that off on someone in real life, I totally would. It's probably the one part of 28PL, along with Sweetie Belle's blasé attitude about it (i wonder how the cake tastes? clearly good if Sweetie Belle didn't seem to mind anything else about it), that sticks out to me as being particularly good. And the one done on Applejack is funny on the sheer idea of how the heck did she do that? I think maybe a kid could probably buy it was the 'extreme' that they had to go to (and thinking about the primary demographic of this show is certainly what I do, and trying to think within the show's world itself rather than simply putting in real world notions everywhere), but I really don't buy it, personally. And to be honest, I think the reason I don't buy it is partly because the set-up beforehand is poor, and I think MMDW's did its setup better, funnily enough. Maybe I could buy something as extreme as this if Rainbow's pranks were getting excessively harmful, or a majority of them were bad, but over half were harmless (and actually really good pranks, at that), and the ones that were harmful didn't take up that much screentime and the pain that would be inflicted was temporary. (In Cranky's case, bathing in tomato juice would probably fix it.) I think it actually might have worked better if they switched the order of the pranks. If Rainbow pranking Fluttershy was more toward the end of the episode, rather than the beginning, then it'd definitely make sense that they'd jump to the conclusion they would need to scare Rainbow in return. I still think the prank would be disproportionate, but I'd be more easily able to follow the ponies' logic that that's the only way they could get through to her. That, and handling the conversations they actually do have in a more realistic way, rather than a miscommunication go balls-out and make Rainbow's blasé attitude from the first prank carry over further. (I mean, if they were willing to depict her that way in the first prank, why not go all out with it?) As it was, that meeting came off less like she brushed them off and more like they put her in a defensive position in which literally no person ever would listen and chose terrible wording that most people would know would egg Rainbow on. This would better hook in the idea of 'making Rainbow feel how we feel about her pranks'. (I mean seriously, Applejack. "Lazy"?) Hell, I think the story would be stronger, even, if the pranks started out harmless and they were fine with it, but over time they progressed to getting annoying and then even dangerous, and that's when they needed to stop her, which would make the moral at the end more nuanced and better emphasize the "for the right audience, for the right time" message the episode is attempting to convey. Come to think of it, MMDW did have a bit of an ordering problem itself... I think a lot of people would be less against that episode if they reasoned that they needed to do something about Rainbow's ego once they noticed Rainbow putting off rescuing people. But unlike MMDW, 28PL started out with its strongest case to show Rainbow what-for first, whereas MMDW escalated to it. I don't know if I would call it a "pacing" problem, so much as a... I don't think the pranks got extreme enough to justify the one that they did. This wouldn't fix the terrible characterization on Rainbow's part, but I acknowledge characters are vehicles for story-telling at their core, and this would at least make it easier to buy the ending. also shit tl;dr this comment is a bit all over the place here sorry lol Yeah, I do think she'll be fine after this, and that's mainly because this is a cartoon, and obviously they're not going to explore how the idea of feeling as though starting a plague would mentally scar you for life. ...though that does make interesting fanfic material It's more the principle of the thing that I'm concerned about. And, taking the demographic into account as I said before, what if it encourages people to believing that attempting these pranks on people in real life is acceptable? In the world of the cartoon it can be fixed just by having a new episode happen, plus the lighthearted tone of the show, but if you did something like that outside of the show you'd pretty badly scar your friend. Food for thought. I pointed this out in a status update, but a lot of Rainbow's fear doesn't seem to come from trying to protect her own life. She speaks a lot about how they would 'wait for the effects to wear off' and that 'no one should eat the cookies'. The video I linked to says it already, but to actually use a line from the transcript: Rainbow Dash: No, no! Stay away! They're making you sick! You don't want these! I mean, lbr, why would Rainbow fear for her life when all they're doing is walking around saying 'cooooookies' over and over? No, the fear would logically stem from how erratic the behavior is...and the guilt that she caused it. It's the isolation of the situation that makes it creepy to Rainbow, not so much the idea that she will be killed by her friends. Because, I mean, she wouldn't... And Rainbow usually doesn't appear to be that afraid to attempts to her life, and she's seen it all before a million times already.

I think Lauren Faust mentioned somewhere that she wanted ponies to have different body types, but earlier on that proved to be difficult for the animators. Maybe they're implementing that more in later seasons?

EDIT: Upon going back over episodes a bit as well as seeing other people's thoughts, I'd like to bring up it's not just "Griffon the Brush-Off" that makes this characterization of Rainbow feel contradictory. "Scare Master", which happened before this episode, has Fluttershy clearly saying being scared is not for her and she wants no part in it and would like to avoid it. Hmmm interesting. Revisiting this episode. Still think it's bad. But I don't want to restate reasons that people have already specified in here, because honestly, I think reciting the same points over and over again was an issue with my comments I made a couple of years back. I'll just sum it up by saying: I agree with the complaint that Rainbow's character regressed and that this retreads ground that she already learned a while ago and didn't need to be spelled out in its own episode, again, with a forced moral. I'll instead bring up some other points that may have been lightly touched upon, or didn't mention much, or didn't mention at all, for the sake of provoking more thought: 1 - There's a very, very odd progression with the pranks in this episode, and I actually think it's something this episode did worse than "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well". While the latter started out with small harmless boasting that progressed and escalated as the episode went on, this episode actually started with the worst prank first. Yeah, some of the other pranks were harmful to the ponies they were inflicted upon, but the first prank we see in the episode is undeniably the worst one given that it visibly brings Fluttershy to tears and gives her a panic attack and relating to the already mentioned 'regression' issue. Normally in an episode like this, the better structure is to have the pranks get worse and worse until the characters establish that they can't take it anymore and they have to do something about it. Not saying this can't work, but generally stuff like this is based upon escalation (and Rule of Threes, but that's a whole other discussion). And I definitely think it doesn't work in this particular episode, given... 2 - Some of the pranks are actually rather funny. The one that Rainbow does to Rarity in particular, I legitimately can't imagine anyone being offended by. No, seriously, I actually think that prank, if not objectively funny, is at least objectively clever and not all that obstructive. I know of no real world person who would be offended by that prank, and I legitimately can't think of any real person who would be offended by it, so the fact that Rarity is, is baffling to me. And if the reason is because of the outfit that Sweetie Belle was supposed to wear, Sweetie Belle herself didn't seem all that upset by it, and she's the one who's supposed to be wearing it... And there's another aspect to that... 3 - Since we're talking about "Griffon the Brush-Off" at all, I think it's not just Rainbow's attitude that was changed for this particular episode - all of the Mane 5 were different in their own way. Remember, Rainbow and Pinkie already pulled pranks on these gals before, pranks that were honestly less original and funny than some of the ones Rainbow pulled in this episode, and they laughed along with it. It's strange that suddenly now they're offended by it. You can say that they have changed and they just think it's juvenile now, but is that really a good change? Could you argue to me that it's a good thing that the characters have suddenly become allergic to the idea of fun? 4 - It's very evident that they were attempting to address the complaints that were in "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" with this episode given that they explicitly show Rainbow's friends talking to her twice in this episode. But here's the issue: I never wanted a retreated of MMDW in the first place. What I wanted, and what I think a vast majority of the people who complained about that episode wanted, was for them to learn from the mistakes of MMDW and use that to better other episodes. And this episode really does basically follow MMDW beat for beat and just change up what exactly they're complaining about in Rainbow's behavior, and what she's going too far with. Just replace "boasting" with "pranking", and it's the same premise in every other way. And them doing something in MMDW and then better in this episode, I'm not about to give it a pass for. And the thing they did fix in this episode... They handled it pretty sloppily, and it rang pretty hollow for me. It is nice that it shows that Fluttershy has progressed to asserting that something is not funny and can stand up to her friends, but that's the only praise I can really give it. 5 - This one has been brought up before, unlike the others which either weren't or were lightly grazed over, but it bears repeating because it's actually the part of the episode that gets me the most. Showing up Rainbow and making her feel worthless like in MMDW is one thing. You could argue they didn't know Rainbow well enough by then to entirely understand that that kind of thing would put Rainbow at a low spot, and you could argue that they saw it as justified because they were still helping other ponies and it's not like they had any control over which 'hero' they favored (their boasting, though, was a bit excessive if their whole point was to illustrate that MMDW was supposed to represent being humble, like lmao, way to rub it in gals). But this is another entirely. Others argued here that Rainbow could seriously hurt ponies in her pranks and they were awful because of that. While I agree the pranks were certainly risky, Rainbow carefully observed them and it was clear her intention was not to harm them (that scaring one doesn't count because that particular prank sticks out like a sore thumb, it doesn't feel like Rainbow would make such a prank and again, it doesn't fit in with the escalation narrative, and it's the one she undoubtedly acted the most insensitive about...i don't know, it's a weird one to me, but in that case maybe you could argue the harm caused by that would be a temporary scare and she didn't know it'd be panic attack inducing, even though Rainbow would have to be hit pretty hard by the idiot ball to believe that). The brick was probably the worst offender in that regard, but even then having bitten into hard things by accident the worst thing you're going to get is some jaw pain for a while. It's clear that to her if it was going to cause any harm it'd be like...pinching someone on St. Patrick's Day kind of harm, the kind you'd get over relatively quickly and sure it'd be annoying but nothing life-threatening. I'm not suggesting they're good pranks (because tbh they were really fucking stupid), but just that the damage that could be caused by them is relatively minor. You know, relatively minor compared to believing that you fed an entire populace of ponies that you personally know and love cookies that turn them into zombified freaks like you spread a freaking plague over them. My point is thus: the thing with MMDW may cause some trust issues at worst for a while, and it'd hurt Rainbow, but it's on the same level as inducing that panic attack in Fluttershy, that sort of thing. It's not something that would stick with her for very long... Despite what fanfic writers may say. Tricking Rainbow into thinking for quite some time that she'd caused a plague on her friends that turned them into zombies is COMPLETELY different. That's an incredible trauma to induce on someone. It's like... On level with those "social experiment" pranks on YouTube. Like, damn, dude, that's way too far. And there's no, no way that they didn't think that would be traumatizing. Or, wouldn't, if they were real people. I'm not angry at these characters for this, they're fictional characters, not worth getting angry at them about it. I'm...frustrated that the writers played that off as acceptable. I mean, I just don't know, some people would probably argue it was justified and weighted well, but I'd be in heavy, heavy disagreement with that. Also, did anyone notice how Rainbow went to find and warn the remaining friends she thought she had...? EDIT2: This review here has a lot of my issues, and why I actually think MMDW was better than 28PL.

To be honest, given that it was in quotations, I was actually thinking this thread would be a discussion on why people find the ponies attractive. Maybe I've been on cesspool forums for too long...

Different interests. It's not just guys who have a lack of interest, my girlfriend isn't really into ponies either. (She's mainly deterred by the art style and the fandom, generally.)

A little nod to the fandom is definitely not the same as implementing it as an actual, full-on plot point. This honestly isn't a weird question to ask, considering it's clearly inspired by the "Cupcakes" fanfic which was written years ago. The crux of it is 'would the events in that fic be possible?' I kind of like it (that is, the hypothetical questions) lately, though. The show wouldn't tackle it, we know that for sure, which is why it's so interesting to talk about - since the show is never going to confirm it, the speculation can go in multiple different directions. Tragedy and comedy go hand in hand.