"It's Just A Kids Show"

[Forlong 1,726]

I think that while being a kid's show is not an excuse for bad writing, it still puts constraints on what they can do.

 

Think about it, a FiM episode has to have a story that isn't too complicated or too subtle that young children can follow AND it has to be told in under 22 minutes. The end result is that you are going to have stories told in broad strokes, where character actions are going to be exaggerated, and where you're not going to spend too much time agonizing over having an air-tight plot.

Hey Arnold has already proved this notion wrong.  There was one episode wherein Arnold, Gerald, and Helga were looking into a ghost of a person who committed suicide (you heard me) and boarded a "haunted train" that they thought took them to Hell.  Then there's the episode about a ghost bride that murdered her husband to be and sister for cheating on her.  Or how about the charming moment when a monitor lizard eats a parrot alive?  That show got dark sometimes.  And that was deliberately made for children.  You just have to know how to present your material.

[IlikeBoris 13]

Yes what kids watch, read, play does have an effect on them even if it isn't always immediate and as the saying goes "garbage in garbage out."

 

I used to have long sagas where my ponies were suffering drought and starvation and consulting the blind oracle.  I'm not sure if it was the magic coins, news warnings about the effects of sparklers on dead grass, the horrible carpet in my room, or a whole mess of everything.  (The blind oracle was a piggybank molded like the horse from Rainbow Brite and his eyes were stickers that fell off http://www.80stoysale.com/images/rbbanks.jpg )

Edited May 3, 2014 by IlikeBoris

[Sir Wulfington 276]

Yes, we all establish our own sense of logic in even the most illogical of fictional settings, to varying degrees. And therein lies the key word: varying. People tend to hold widely varying views as to what qualifies as a violation of our logic. Due to the purely subjective nature of how each of us perceives a piece of media, a person may suspend his or her disbelief under entirely different conditions than someone else. I.e., what may be a believable story to you may be a total pile of horseshit to someone else, and what may be a completely ludicrous story to you may very well be the next Citizen Kane for someone else.

 

I'm never adverse to the idea of a show like MLP improving itself, but I'm not seeing the so-called nosedive in quality that others are seeing. This poses one of two possibilities: Either the expectations of people like me are ridiculously low (did really, ANY of us really have any expectations about this girly cartoon about rainbow-colored ponies upon watching our first episode?), or the expectations of people like you have grown ridiculously high as the seasons progress, and such people are merely using "the show's going downhill" as an excuse to justify their own disenchantment with something they once loved. Kind of like how CR "ragequit the fandom" after Twilicorn.

 

Point is, the show's quality was never predicated on the desires of self-entitled 20-something year-old college kids. It was predicated on what Lauren Faust herself - and you can corroborate this for yourself by looking back on the dA post you shared in the OP - said was the core demographic: Kids and their parents. (As far as I'm aware, the show is still very much continuing to please this demo.) This show was never "for us", and I truly hope it stays that way. For the writers to give into the outright demands that some of you are throwing at them would completely throw this show in the shitter, as far as I'm concerned.

 

I wouldn't say people's definition on acceptable logic for fiction varies....ok, well, there are some people who won't accept anything that isn't exactly like real life, but that's silliness (like some people would say the entire show can't work because talking candy-colored horses makes no sense. The way I see it, unless they're biological design and or the environment they live in make it so that it is literally impossible for them to survive at all, than we should just buy it. Maybe some deity made them, or they just spawned out of nothing. Or maybe they're the result scientific experiments by an alien race). Some people come across something in a story and think it's acceptable logic, only because they haven't thought hard enough about it to realize it doesn't make sense, not even within the confines of the fictional settings logical rules. Conversely, one might think something is a plot hole, when there's a perfectly valid explanation for it if you just think deeper.

 

Also, I don't see how what I want for the show (which is it to be coherent and consistent) would ruin it. Sure, I guess certain episodes may not exist, or have to be changed dramatically (the resolution of Bats! was absolutely absurd and nothing could possibly make sense out of it), so I suppose I can get why you'd be against it for that reason, but that would make the show better, because its quality would be raised as a result. If the premise and or resolution of your story is illogical, than it should be scrapped.

Edited May 3, 2014 by Sir Wulfington

[Wind Chaser 4,768]

 

I hate that argument that "it's just a kids' show". This is the reason why most cartoons these days are just unbearable to watch. Check out the video by Brony Debates, he gives us the reason why this argument should be rendered unacceptable.