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Author Topic: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic  (Read 227319 times)

MC Dirty

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #495 on: October 26, 2011, 06:30:01 pm »

To that effect, the adoptive parent can have the child dragon perform any chore as long as the chore does not threaten the life of the child, as is with any other parent.
I would rephrase that if I were you, because that's not at all what being a parent is about and it especially isn't how a parent should act. You can harm a child a great deal without ever endangering his or her life.
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Dsarker

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #496 on: October 26, 2011, 06:32:00 pm »

To that effect, the adoptive parent can have the child dragon perform any chore as long as the chore does not threaten the life of the child, as is with any other parent.
I would rephrase that if I were you, because that's not at all what being a parent is about and it especially isn't how a parent should act. You can harm a child a great deal without ever endangering his or her life.
While it isn't about what being a parent about...it's what being an elder sibling is about. Parents give love and security, siblings take it away and force you to stand on your own two feet.
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TheBronzePickle

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #497 on: October 26, 2011, 06:37:28 pm »

A parent can have a child perform any chore that isn't abusive to the child. That should be generic enough.

The parent is also expected to take physical and emotional care of the child. It's obvious that Twilight has done this for Spike, although probably not as well as she should have.

In the end, though, there's just not enough of a sample to effectively judge. All we know is that Twilight and Spike have a pseudo-maternal relationship but with Spike doing a lot of work to help take care of Twilight that most children wouldn't do.

Considering Twilight may have some sort of mental handicap, however, Spike could be like some children in a similar situation, being forced to care for a parent that isn't able to care for his- or herself as well as a more able-minded person.
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LordBucket

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #498 on: October 26, 2011, 06:42:17 pm »

Well, for good reason as shown in "Owl's Well That Ends Well".
Spike had plenty of contact with his own kind and nearly died!

This will be the last time I respond to poorly thought out comments that have already been addressed.

 * You can't cite something that happened in episode 24 as a motivation for a decision made in episode 7
 * The dragon in that episode was defending his hoard. Spike came in unannounced and ate gems that didn't belong to him until he was gorged.
 * When the dragon came home to Spike with a distended belly full of his gems, he was polite about it and talked to Spike, yet Spike taunted him and spat a breath attack at him first.

So...somebody breaks into your house, helps themselves to your stuff, and when you ask what they're doing in your house, they shout that they're not afraid of you then attack you, so you chase them out. And you're citing that as motivation to keep Spike away from dragons, despite that happening fully 17 episodes after the decision to keep Spike away from dragons?

Dsarker

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #499 on: October 26, 2011, 06:44:16 pm »

Well, for good reason as shown in "Owl's Well That Ends Well".
Spike had plenty of contact with his own kind and nearly died!

This will be the last time I respond to poorly thought out comments that have already been addressed.

 * You can't cite something that happened in episode 24 as a motivation for a decision made in episode 7
 * The dragon in that episode was defending his hoard. Spike came in unannounced and ate gems that didn't belong to him until he was gorged.
 * When the dragon came home to Spike with a distended belly full of his gems, he was polite about it and talked to Spike, yet Spike taunted him and spat a breath attack at him first.

So...somebody breaks into your house, helps themselves to your stuff, and when you ask what they're doing in your house, they shout that they're not afraid of you then attack you, so you chase them out. And you're citing that as motivation to keep Spike away from dragons, despite that happening fully 17 episodes after the decision to keep Spike away from dragons?

Yes. Because this is due to something that is obviously well known about Dragons - THEY TEND TO WANT TO KILL YOU.
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TheBronzePickle

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #500 on: October 26, 2011, 06:47:32 pm »

Generally, males of a territorial species are likely going to be pretty unfriendly to another male, no matter what the age. Spike not being brought in Dragonshy could easily be said to have been for his own safety, and there's not much of a rational argument you could put up against that.
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kaijyuu

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #501 on: October 26, 2011, 06:49:05 pm »

Should be noted that the two adult dragons shown on screen only appeared hostile AFTER people started touching their horde. The one in dragonshy just blew the ponies off until Rarity went in there, and of course didn't attack until after the face kicking.
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TheBronzePickle

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #502 on: October 26, 2011, 06:53:53 pm »

At the same time, it's been demonstrated by Spike that dragons have a sense of territory, and are willing to go to pretty far lengths to secure it. Even if you put up an argument against that, it's also been demonstrated that Twilight isn't going to bring Spike somewhere his life might be in danger, and she wouldn't know how one dragon would react to another and would likely err on the side of caution.
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MC Dirty

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #503 on: October 26, 2011, 06:55:25 pm »

Well, for good reason as shown in "Owl's Well That Ends Well".
Spike had plenty of contact with his own kind and nearly died!

This will be the last time I respond to poorly thought out comments that have already been addressed.

 * You can't cite something that happened in episode 24 as a motivation for a decision made in episode 7
 * The dragon in that episode was defending his hoard. Spike came in unannounced and ate gems that didn't belong to him until he was gorged.
 * When the dragon came home to Spike with a distended belly full of his gems, he was polite about it and talked to Spike, yet Spike taunted him and spat a breath attack at him first.

So...somebody breaks into your house, helps themselves to your stuff, and when you ask what they're doing in your house, they shout that they're not afraid of you then attack you, so you chase them out. And you're citing that as motivation to keep Spike away from dragons, despite that happening fully 17 episodes after the decision to keep Spike away from dragons?
Ninja'd by Dsarker, but I just want to add a few things:
Yes, you can very well cite something that happened 17 episodes after a decision as a reason for that decision. While dragons are rare, they aren't rare enough for them to be completely unknown creatures. This is shown by the fact that Fluttershy is afraid of dragons and that ponies were able to acquire a dragon egg.
The ponies know that dragons have really short tempers and that Spike isn't really the smartest when it comes to sensing and dealing with danger. And the dragon didn't just chase Spike out, it tried to kill him. It knew that Spike was no threat to him at all and Spike was already on his way out, yet the dragon still attacked him.
If they took Spike with them in "Dragonshy", he most likely would have gotten hurt. Yes, probably because of his own actions, but that doesn't change anything.
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Flying Dice

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #504 on: October 26, 2011, 06:57:43 pm »

I'd say that the first is more plausible. Otherwise, Celestia is going to have to go with every expedition, and that means that she's not doing more important stuff.

Seriously.

This is exactly the point I was making, and it fits with my larger hypothesis regarding her selective xenocide/arrangement of mutualistic relations. It isn't that Celestia can't overpower dragons, it is that she has much better things to do than constantly fight off dragons just so she can continue a program of slavery with no benefits beyond instant communication between a select few individuals.

Especially given the canon evidence that, given opportunity to put Spike in contact with his own kind they specifically chose not to.
Well, for good reason as shown in "Owl's Well That Ends Well". Spike had plenty of contact with his own kind and nearly died!

Again, this is support for my view: dragon young do not mix well with mature dragons. Removing them from the environment for a period of education is beneficial for both species.

You assume that the impression is against the will of the
parent dragons, yet there is no evidence for this.

No one's given any evidence that it's with their permission either. But we're given the choice of:

a) Dragons are either willingly giving up or accidentally losing eggs in sufficient quantities that ponies can totally by chance find them without any way to return them often enough to keep Celestia's school supplied

or

b) Ponies are procuring those eggs themselves without permission

In the absense of any direct evidence to support either answer, I simply ask...which is more plausible? Especially given the canon evidence that, given opportunity to put Spike in contact with his own kind they specifically chose not to.

"Ponies are procuring those eggs themselves without permission" How, exactly? Both episodes involving dragons showed that they are supernaturally protective of their hoards, which would include eggs. And it is more plausible that the two species are working together for mutual benefit than that, as stated above, Celestia is wasting massive amounts of time for no appreciable benefit that could not be had by enslaving a less powerful species, or by pushing for a small amount of technological progress. Twilight didn't put Spike in contact with the dragon in Dragonshy for reasons that are plainly obvious in the other episode involving an adult dragon. Dragons are incredibly possessive without any assistance, and she knows that Spike is a baby, and that he has very little self control. She (likely accurately) predicted that he would try to eat or take something from the hoard. Apart from that, there is no reason to take him. Would you take a baby with you on a mapping expedition for your senior thesis, or into a cave to rouse a lion?

By the way, just because something is canon doesn't mean that it automatically supports you. You need to provide valid reasoning for why it supports you.

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it is much more likely that they are involved in some sort of mutualistic relationship where eggs are sent to the academy to be raised, strengthening the bonds between dragonkind and ponykind, eventually outliving their partners and joining the dragon population as adults.

That might be possible, but if so...then you're suggesting that dragons are deliberately giving away their children to be raised as servants to ponies. That scenario does explain what we see in the show, but there is no direct evidence for it. Granted, there also appears to be no direct evidence for my scenario, but I ask again: which seems more plausible? Would you give away your children to be raised as a servant to another species?

Personally I suspect that it's a matter of selective blinders. Like people in this thread have insisted that it's not slavery just because Twilight is nice to Spike. There's a tendancy to try to put a "nice" slant on things. Ponies probably don't think of what they're doing as kidnapping or slavery.

Because they aren't giving their children away into servitude/slavery! We have evidence from the show that adult dragons tend to react badly to other dragons, so sending young away to be raised by unicorns would defuse tensions and prevent infanticide [1]. Dragons raised by unicorns at the academy are going to be exposed to a wide variety of educational and cultural information, helping them develop into educated, culturally aware adults who are able to interact with other species in ways that won't get them curbstomped by Celestia, further increasing the survivability of dragons as a species [2]. The young dragons also learn how to live without constantly being the ultimate authority, further preparing them for life in a world where political leaders are also immortal goddesses who can kill you if you do something to piss them off [3]. As for the pony side of things, the students bonded with dragons gain assistance in their studies [4], as well as the experience of a significant responsibility, where they are fully aware that their actions are affecting the life of another individual, preparing them both for parenthood [5] and for taking public office or conducting serious magical research [6]. There are six reasons why the bonding of magically gifted unicorns and baby dragons is beneficial to both species in ways entirely unrelated to slavery or servitude.

Ponies don't think of it as kidnapping or slavery because it isn't.

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The consensus seems to be that they were shocked because she grew
Spike into a mature dragon (or a parody of one), not that she hatched
him. I don't know where you are pulling this from.

Not sure if you're responding to me on this one. I've suggested that they were reacting to the fact that Twilight was losing magical control and engulfed them in lightning. And images were posted coroborating that.

But whether they were reacting to the lightning or Spike turning into godzilla, either way supports my position. The whole question came up because some people proposed a couple pages ago that nobody actually expected her to hatch the egg, and that it was all as you phrased it, a false-front exam. The evidence doesn't support that, because again...nobody reacted to her hatching the egg.

Actually, the only person I recall saying that was me, in jest.


Quote
IF CELESTIA WAS KIDNAPPING DRAGON EGGS, SHE WOULD HAVE ANGRY DRAGONS, BURNING TOWNS, AND MANGLED PONIES OUT THE WAZOO. SHE DOES NOT, SO CLEARLY SHE ISN'T KIDNAPPING THEM.

Celestia is a goddess responsible for making to sun come up every morning. Would you really want to go burning down her towns?


I've already covered this, but repetition is apparently necessary. Draconic reaction to thieves is not logical, it is instinctual. If you take something of their, they will hunt you down. Celestia wouldn't kidnap dragon eggs not because she couldn't fight dragons, but because it would be a massive pain in the ass for her to have to continually go kill (apart from returning the eggs, which is no longer possible once they've been hatched, this is the only real option for her) rampaging dragons, along with the time and cost of repairing everything each one would destroy. Not to mention the lives lost. Yes, the dragons would "lose" by being killed, but Celestia would be involved in a long series of bloody victories where she not only wasted time and energy, but lost productive land and had subject slaughtered. Not that it would be very long before she drove the species to extinction.


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Rarity and the Diamond Dogs: Is Rarity a child now?

No and that's not what was said. Heliman was trying to use a cop-out and I was simply calling him on it.

He implied in this post that since it was a children's show, obviously such a dark thing as dragon slavery couldn't exist. I responded with totally canon evidence of pony slavery. Interracial slavery obviously exists in the show: diamond dogs chained up Rarity to work their mine. I'm obviously not saying that Rarity is a child. I'm simply pointing out that it's silly to suggest that such a thing as "dragon slavery" can't exist in a children's show when we can very easily point out canon examples of pony slavery.


And the point I was making was that an isolated incident involving three individuals involved in a rather poorly designed attempt at enslaving a fourth with a fairly rare special talent which was very useful to them, which was rapidly thwarted, is substantially different from an organized program of enslavement on the part of a benevolent goddess/dictator who has no practical reason for doing so. Why would they possibly need dragon child-slaves? This is the biggest flaw in your argument: there is no economic or social reason for ponies to enslave dragon children. Why?

+ What do they do? Menial labor plus instant messaging between "owners" and the princesses. The first could be performed much more easily by hired servant ponies, or by enslaving another, less dangerous species. Or, for that matter, by magical enchantments, golems, etc. The second is hardly necessary, given the relatively peaceful nature of Equestria. A pegasus can fly from Canterlot to Ponyville in less than a day; it likely wouldn't take more than a week to reach any point in the principality. For that matter, a proper network of roads and dedicated courier system would be much more useful in a wider range of applications; the courier network and Royal Road established by the Acheamenids in Persia allowed a message to travel from the westernmost parts of Anatolia to the capital at Persepolis in less than two weeks, and that without Earth pony endurance.
+ Numbers. Simply put, there are not enough dragons in five hundred worlds identical to Equestria to make them a viable slave population.
+ Economic demand. Simply put, slavery exists as an institution for three main reasons: as a way to deal with private debt (obviously not applicable), to utilize POWs (again, not applicable), and to provide cheap labor for a difficult job, such as large scale agricultural operation. All farms we have seen thusfar are family affairs, capable of being harvested by a few ponies. We have no reason to assume things are different elsewhere.
+ Difficulty. If you want to enslave a species, why would you pick the one that is full of giant armored flying flamethrowers? Celestia isn't stupid.
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MC Dirty

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #505 on: October 26, 2011, 07:04:06 pm »

If you want to enslave a species, why would you pick the one that is full of giant armored flying flamethrowers?
FOR !!SCIENCE!! *strokes his massive, dwarven beard*

Now, back to ponies...
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LordBucket

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #506 on: October 26, 2011, 07:04:38 pm »

Should be noted that the two adult dragons shown on screen only
appeared hostile AFTER people started touching their horde.

Agreed.

Actually, I just watched the dragon sequence in Dragonshy, and it's very interesting how it plays out. Three separate ponies go into his cave, and he mostly just triesto go back to sleep. Rarity is picking pieces out of his hoard and putting them on in front of him, but he just takes it back and again goes back to sleep.

It's not until Rainbow Dash flies in and kicks him in the face that he does anything. And yet, despite ponies being the first to violence, Fluttershy goes in and accuses him of being the bully.

Total double standard. They wake him up repeatedly, they try to take his stuff, they kick him in the face...yet somehow he's the bully? Apparently when it's ponies being violent, that's ok. But defend yourself and your home, and you're the bad guy.

Exactly the kind of blinders I alluded to earlier. If ponies were stealing dragon eggs, they'd find a way to rationalize it.

TheBronzePickle

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #507 on: October 26, 2011, 07:11:40 pm »

You do have a point. I'm trying to find a way to put my argument against it into words that make sense.

Basically, he was kind of idiotic for not chasing the ponies away before he reached a point where he was angry enough to try and kill them. It probably didn't cross his mind, which removes his fault. Of course, the only pony who was stupid enough to try and attack a dragon is at blame, but Rainbow Dash isn't all the ponies. She's just her, and the dragon tried to kill them all.

Anyway, how does the ponies stealing dragon eggs pertain to the hatched dragons being slaves again? They appear to be two separate issues in my mind.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2011, 07:13:38 pm by TheBronzePickle »
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MC Dirty

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #508 on: October 26, 2011, 07:16:01 pm »

Yeah, Bucket, you do have a point, but you need to remember that a dragon is basically a flying, firebreathing tank. A dragon trying to kill a pony because it kicked you in the face is (in human terms) like trying to kill someone because he tapped your shoulder. While the dragon no doubt had a reason to be angry, he did overreact quite a bit, showing, again, that dragons are really freaking dangerous when you piss them off and Spike, being a child, is really good at pissing people off.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2011, 07:18:07 pm by MC Dirty »
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Sordid

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Re: My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic
« Reply #509 on: October 26, 2011, 07:22:19 pm »

And yet nobody was killed. All the dragon breathed was some smoke and no fire. Surely if dragons were as dangerous as you claim, he would've done a better job of the killing. I'd say he wasn't trying all that hard. Probably just tried to scare the ponies away.
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