Plus, shouldn't their loss of color have clued Twilight in? Anyone with eyes could see that something happened.

I think the decoloration was only for the benefit of the audience, and didn't happen in-universe.

Also, I think you're suffering from Audience Awareness Advantage and hindsight bias. Twilight could obviously tell that her friends were acting a bit differently, but it's a bit of a leap to go straight from that to magical brainwashing, when it could just be the huge amounts of stress they were under and so on. Also, she had no way to *know* that the Eo H wouldn't work without trying it, and she probably figured it was their only option anyway so they might as well try.

Post of the Week #3605

Posted by Badwolfwho on Fri, 18th May '12 12:51:15 PM - Post #197441 in the old thread

They don't really clarify whether the decoloration was only an audience visual thing or something that is visible to the others in-universe too.

The fact Twilight was briefly about to leave her friends behind and leave Ponyville in response to her friends' new attitudes is kinda telling that she didn't even try to wonder why they're acting so differently, especially with this line, "FINE! Leave! See if I care! I don't need you guys either! With friends like you, who needs... enemies...?" and "Pack your things, Spike, we're leaving." had Celestia not sent her the friendship letters.

Yeah, but she's like that all the time in the early show. When she's overwhelmed, she just gives up in defeat and leaves, or tries to. She tends to not think straight in a crisis early on.

This post made me realise something: both My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) and The Bad Guys (2022) have a tearjerking scene taking place at the beach where main heroes disown their friends and later feel guilty about it.

She thought they were acting differently because Discord won/broke them, which was true, how he did was unimportant to Twilight's trauma that their friendship wasn't enough. Fluttershy was the only one straight-up brainwashed, the rest were corrupted though "fair" means, so their being equally greyed/OOC means there's no reason for Twi to assume he cheated like you think she would (especially since she had no experience with such a effective manipulator).

Again, how he corrupted them, via fair means or cheating, is irrelevant to why Twilight despaired they they were corrupted at all. Even if she realized he brainwashed them that she had no idea how to reverse it before Celestia's letter meant she should have succumbed the same.

Correct. Even as late as The Movie and the S9 finale she prone to despairing needing her friends to snap her out of it.

Speaking of The Movie since brought it up:

• A better comparison would be The Last Jedi; 2017 films about what would lead Luke/Twilight to commit mistakes/acts at odds with their normal characters that they quickly regretted, the consequences, and how they redeemed themselves, which proved very controversial with fans. Thoughts about that?
• How much more would Twilight have to go though before her actions, while wrong, would be understandable enough that it wouldn't be as much of a complaint? And if it was set between S4-S5 (when the script was written), would Twilight's actions have made more sense (not having other allies to ask for help, lacking her level of character development)?

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on May 4th 2024 at 1:50:35 AM

Yep, early-show Twilight has a very clear tendency towards emotional overreaction — both in throwing up her metaphorical hands in defeat when things turn bad and in going into spirals of obsession and worst-case thinking when a problem turns up.

(Incidentally, that's also why the others didn't really take her seriously with the Cadance thing — from their perspective, all that was going was Twilight going into one of her making-a-mountain-out-of-a-molehill spirals, just humor her and she'll get over it. By the second season's end, they've seen her do that more than once.)

Which is especially confusing since after the "Lesson Zero" fiasco, the five of them swore they'd never do something like that again.

• Twilight has also learned not to jump to conclusions without proof the episode before the wedding. So if Aesop Amnesia is unrealistic Twi had it worse.
• They "never did that again" in that they tolerated/tried to reassure her as long as they did, it took until her massive outburst without any proof and "Cadence" emotionally manipulating them to turn against her.
• What would seem more plausible without Audience Awareness Advantage; Twilight was overacting (given she failed to have adequate proof) again, or that Cadence had turned evil/replaced by a race portrayed as no-one knowing about prior as opposed to being stressed?
• Is there proof the wedding was set after "Lesson Zero" as opposed to jumping around the timeline? "Winter Wrap Up" and "Fall Weather Friends" was stated by Word of God to be out of order, and there's other things that make more sense if so.

Since them turning on Twilight is so important/the payoff worth it that nearly every fic criticizing the matter still includes it rather than fix it by having them stand by Twi, what would it take to make their turning on her be as valid/forgivable as intended as opposed to a complaint?

And is it Common Knowledge that they ignored her warning that Cadance was an evil imposter? Twi merely accused her of being evil not even considering the imposter thing until afterward.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on May 4th 2024 at 11:02:10 AM

Who do you all think is the scariest when angry between Twilight, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rarity?

fluttershy

It depends, though. That one time, Fluttershy gave Discord “the Stare,” and he laughed very hard.

Twilight as 1. she has the most potential power behind it (including a semi-established Superpowered Evil Side that's multiversal threat) 2. her moments of anger lack the others mitigating awesomeness or comedy and causes things to get worse (see The Movie).

Anyway, these MLP fanworks under Condemned by History have issues I want to run by:

• Ask Princess Molestia: To make a long story short, as time went on and the show's popularity increased, more and more fans came to see the premise as incredibly disturbing. After all, Molestia is the comedic story of Princess Celestia, well, sexually molesting her subjects. Nowadays, no one really remembers the blog very fondly save for the impressive artwork. Let's just say it was written in a different era of internet culture. '''This was previously deleted as it fails to explain that it was originally popular and why. Any thoughts on why?

• The Conversion Bureau was a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction written in 2011, which spawned a completely new genre along with spin-offs based on the premise that quickly became some of the most popular MLP fanfiction around. By the mid-2010s, the genre rapidly fell out of favor as additional seasons showed the ponies and Equestria in a less saccharine light. Not helping things was how the episode "The Cutie Map" was commonly interpreted as a Take That! to the core concept of the genre. The numerous Flame Wars involving both the pro and anti factions as well as many authors in the genre going through Creator Backlash also further dissuaded authors. Now, thanks to the stigma of Wish-Fulfillment, Canon Defilement, general misanthropy, and unfortunate messages, there are few, if any fans and authors of the "straight" TCB stories and they’re usually disdained. Anti-TCB authors and fans are somewhat more common, but it’s still minuscule compared to the heyday of the subgenre. I believe only the Anti-TBC genre counts as the straight ones were never popular given the backlashed spawned the anti-TBC genre, the only current relevant Anti-TBC fics being those that address things like the ponies vilification. That the case or did Pro-TBC fics ever have widespread popularity/influence?
  • One of those spin-off stories, The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum, was originally praised for its deeper look into the machinations of the Solar Empire, the effects the conversion/xenocide campaign would have on the Empire, and for the addition of a third faction that is not the HLF or the PER. Over time, fans and even the authors turned against the story for the Designated Hero nature of the protagonist and the poor characterizations of Princess Celestia and Discord. The story still has its good moments and there are fans of it, but even they acknowledge that the story is very flawed. Valid if part of the above Condemned, likely the turning point causing it. Without the broader Anti-TBC Condemned not sure.

Much of this change was the vilification of Celestia becoming discredited and seen as toxic. But am I right in believing that the fandom having waned interest in mature/dark fics? If so has it waned due to the show having more mature/dark content in later seasons...

• Reducing the need for fanworks to get their fix thus making the flaws less tolerated?
• Stopped FIM from being the blank slate that made it previously connective to such?
• Discredited a lot of the fanon/ideas behind the mature/dark fics?
• Was/became divisive enough in the show to hurt the appeal in fanworks?

The Molestia fanfic was definitely popular around the time edgier humor like that was still popular around the internet (circa mid-2000s to early-2010s) but as the topic of sexual assault started becoming more serious, the Molestia comic probably was seen in a really awkward light. I think something like that could be a good explanation.

As Shoobedobah said, the Internet's general culture changed. The aughts-and-early-tens web was much more fond of dark AUs and edgy humor — the "your favorite character is actually a murderer", "this show is actually the main character's dying dream", and "canon but with more swearing/violence/sex/all of the above" were a pretty major thing for basically any lighthearted work. Pokémon and Mario had their fair share of it as well, for instance. This mostly waned over the 2010s, so that by now it's not really a major thing anymore — you still see dregs of it now and again, but it's nowhere near as prevalent or popular as it used to be.

One part of this was that in early web culture, there was a well-established trend where people didn't really take things very seriously and preferred to engage with both fiction and real life through sarcastic humor, deconstruction, and parody, often not very lighthearted — the original meme, troll and lolz culture. That mostly stopped being the case over the past decade and change, partly during the move of the main web activity from forums to social media.

There's also the question of overexposure. After a while, people just kind of got fed up with dark deconstructions — this sort of dark stories went from being edgy subversive humor, which was their original appeal, to just the rote by-the-numbers overdone status quo, so there was a reversal where taking something seriously and at face value because the fresh way to look at fiction. Sort of a stylistic Full-Circle Revolution, if you will.

Speaking of The Conversion Bureau, after reading this comment Chatoyance wrote regarding The Taste of Grass, I've concluded that people have been reading The Conversion Bureau: The Chatoverse wrong, and that the series is meant to be an anti-religious satire told by an Unreliable Narrator.

How could she make ponies coming on Earth "the greatest terror of all"? By giving them a Black-and-White Insanity that convinces them that Humans Are Bastards, and having them being led by a Knight Templar of a monarch with an Omniscient Morality License that parallels Real Life examples of religious extremism— which is exactly what she did.

Edited by SantosLHalper on May 7th 2024 at 10:05:05 AM

I have browsed through all TCB stories on FimFiction and Equestria Daily.

The original TCB story was published in March of 2011.

The first extant TCB story on FimFiction is An Azure Future, published on 22-Jul-2011. This appears to be a TCB story played straight.

The first extant "anti-TCB" story I could find is "Ten Minutes", published on 14-Dec-2011. While it could be considered the ancestor of the "anti-TCB" story, it lacks the War Fic feel of the later TCB stories.

The next anti-TCB story is "The Conversion Bureau: What Would Really Happen?", published on 27-Mar-2012. Again, it's not a War Fic unlike the later anti-TCB stories.

Between those two, most of them are straight TCB stories.

It's only by 2013 or so that the anti-TCB stories start really picking up and start outnumbering the straight TCB stories.

Edited by DialgaX on May 7th 2024 at 10:38:46 AM

Does that mean they were once widely popular as opposed to divisive?

The Anti-TBC author troper I PM'd thinks not, and that straight examples don't have the presence on this wiki (individual pages) of the anti supports that. But there's enough bias I'd like a second opinion if possible.

If I don't get one, I'll assume straight TBC was too divisive/niche even back then to count.

The Conversion Bureau? Oh yeah, very popular, to the point that people were writing fanfics about that universe.

All of which were critical of the original premise XD

Sure, but that's also a kind of popularity. If people didn't care about it, they wouldn't have written reaction fics about it, after all. It's basically the hatedom around the fandom of these fanfics.

That's why it's only the Anti-TBC fics that were once popular enough to be Condemned by History as opposed to just condemned like straight TBC fics apparently were even then.

Or was it the case that straight TBC fics ever had the level of widespread unironic fandom to fit Condemned?

I'm not familiar enough with that fic universe to answer that. There's probably people around who remember, but they may not frequent this thread any more.

Again, the one I asked said no. So I'll rework the Condemned by History entry to be about just the Anti-TBC side as Pro was seemingly too divisive even back then. Pro can be added back later if proof/arguments are made it fits.

On the subject of fanoworks, regarding FIM's place on The Inverse Law of Fandom Levity. Was that the reason why, as the show got darker/more mature and complex in later seasons, that Dark Fics and other mature works become less prominent? Or was that just general loss of fandom interest in the series/other reasons?