My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Page 76

Episode 11 is about Twilight looking around trying to find somewhere to help with the Winter Wrap-up. She offers to help Rarity, but her nest making skills are deficient. She offers to help Pinkie, but she doesn't know how to skate. She tries to help AJ, but she doesn't have the strength to do so. She states that there must be something she can do, and eventually she finds it: Twilight's organizational skills turns out to be the skill most needed by the town's frantic, arguing ponies. The moral that Twilight describes to Celestia at the end of the show, and thus explicates to anybody watching who hadn't figured it out:

"...we all have hidden talents, and if we're patient, and diligent, we're sure to find them..."

Which is, frankly speaking, complete bullshit.


Psych, I joke, I kid, I kid. If I offend i'm sorry, please please forgive! Actually, I agree with the moral (especially the "patient and diligent" part). I just disagree with the way they framed it, with the context and perspective given to it - something subtle indeed, but hang with me here. The key phrase that bugs me the wrong way about this is "we're sure to find them." You don't FIND skills, you go out and HUNT for them, you acquire the knowledge and discipline to do what is necessary to become good at something. Nobody is BORN with the organizational skills required to rally an entire town's resources to best expedite a large scale project; Twilight had to have sharpened that skill over the duration of her own life. If she had wanted to help Rarity, she could have. Rarity would have to take time out of her own schedule to teach Twilight, and maybe it would have been better to tell Twilight to wait until next year before nest building - but there's nothing stopping Twilight from being the best nest maker there can be. The same goes for Pinkie and skating. The same almost goes for AJ and snow shoveling, which requires a strength that would take far more than one day to develop. Which brings me to another point...
Not everybody can be good at everything. We don't have equal opportunities in life: someone born deaf will not grow up to be a musician. Somebody with certain genetic problems might not get to be the next Olympic medalist, and most people won't get to be the next Olympic medalist either, because if you're thirty years old trying to train against people who have been training since they were eight years old... you've already missed your shot.
But then here comes episode 12, with
"A cutie mark appears on a pony's flank when he or she finds that certain something that makes them different from every other pony. Discovering what makes you unique..."
Okay, there's ton of problems with this. Obviously, most people are NOT unique. The Albert Einstein's in the world are unique, but they're unique because they're also one-in-a-million. Then again, it's not the most encouraging message in the world to tell kids "Odds are, you're not special compared to most people, and you're definitely ain't one-in-a-million." However, telling kids that there is something special out there that is perfect for them will set them up for disappointment if they don't ever find it. It's kinda like college freshmen choosing majors. I was incredibly lucky to have "found" a major I love, but I know not everybody is that lucky. Eventually, though, every freshman will have to "choose" one major or another. So I would be grateful if MLP:FiM would employ this slightly different verb.

And for all I know, the rest of episode 12 might reveal this subtlety I described. I'll have to see.

+ Show Spoiler [One last thing] +

Edit: hot damn. I just pressed play, and I heard the teacher say

"and no amount of hoping, wishing, or begging will make a cutie mark appear before its time"

Really? The cutie mark is about whatever one thing you most enjoy/identify with/are good at doing/whatever, and the core component behind that is how we feel about that one thing. As in, if I'm hoping, wishing, and begging to have a poker cutie mark, then poker would BE my cutie mark because otherwise I wouldn't be hoping, wishing, and begging for it.

Surprisingly, I did not think to mention that cutie marks should have the ability to CHANGE over time. Maybe the first twenty years of my life were dominated by playing poker, but then Stacraft: Broodwar was released and I changed mental gears. My cutie mark should change as well.

Urrgghhh... I'm never going to finish this episode.

Edit2: Okay it's way obvious what she meant about the hoping/wishing/begging, and I just didn't understand the context. Which made the last couple of paragraphs useless. Which is why I should wait to finish the episode before writing about it. Gargh.

Anyone catch my Em reference?