@Hali the Emoji girl
I don’t like how his episode is set up. The bit at the start where he meets Rainbow Dash and gets along great with her feels like someone’s fantasy, but that moment where he says something he isn’t allowed to say and she suddenly stops liking him feels like it was designed to say “You could get lucky and have the ultimate fantasy meeting at a convention and become a great friend of Rainbow Dash’s, but you would ruin it for yourself if you are like this guy”.
Then there’s some (Admittedly really fun) filler. It’s fun, but the Arbitrary Skepticism of Quibble Pants about the whole adventure is pointless and annoying. I do like how he’s still useful though.
And then at the end, he “Learns the moral of the episode”, which is “Different people are allowed to like different parts of the same product”.
Thing is, that was never something he didn’t already know. The episode’s actual moral is “Two different perspectives and two different types of people can both have value”, but the writers decided they wanted the designated wrong character to “Learn a lesson” about “Letting people enjoy things” (God I hate that stupid red herring of a concept). And instead of framing it as both ponies learning the lesson, RD learning to accept his dislike for the actiony parts and QP learning to accept her preference for the actiony parts, it’s framed as “RD was right all along and QP must learn the lesson”. Even though he wasn’t insulting Rainbow Dash for “liking the lame part and not being a true fan”, he just admitted he didn’t like the direction the series took and that annoyed RD. Shows are meant to accept their falling ratings with grace and tact, and accept that not all major shark-jumpy show-changes to major characters and the series’s overall direction will resonate with your entire fanbase, especially if they’re pulled off badly now and then. Not release episodes and shorts trying to insult critics of the show and have their complaints come from the mouths of old people or designated lame characters.
If you’re wondering why I genuinely hate that “LPET” statement, behold:
Mankind has finally discovered a sentence far more stupid and far more harmful than “Good Job”, and it’s “Let People Enjoy Things”. If you can only enjoy your product when you can’t remember the last time its flaws were pointed out to you, you don’t love the product, you just want to. And usually for a dumb reason like “I think being seen liking this product will make me look like a better person, or make me become loved by this big fandom it has”. Put the glasses from They Live on, and look at someone saying “Let People Enjoy Things”. Do you know what you’ll see? You’ll see a zombie saying “Stay silent and consume”. Or a robot saying “Do not criticize product, just purchase and love product then get excited for next product”. I don’t mean to be offensive when I say that, that They Live reference was put here for comedy’s sake and anyone who likes They Live or this concept is welcome to call me whatever they want in response, but this kind of statement is something only someone who wants to encourage robotic/zombie-like behaviour would say, whether they realize it or not. I’m sorry, Frank, but you’re a big boy now. I’m sorry, Karen, but you’re a big girl now. And if you two go on the internet, you’re going to see criticism of media you like, and they’re allowed to criticize media you like. They aren’t taking your ability to enjoy media away from you by criticizing it. They aren’t fun-hating demons here to harsh your good vibes. Nobody hurts Pokemon fans or the Pokemon franchise by saying “Toxapex is the worst thing Pokemon ever produced” or “I hate how hard the marketing pushes Lucario” or “Black and White is my favourite Pokemon game, but those cutscenes in Sun and Moon convinced me to stop playing halfway through and never pick the game back up again”.
When Fallout 76 came out, the Fallout fanbase didn’t turn hostile towards all critics of the game, the Fallout fanbase rightfully called Bethesda out for releasing a buggy unfinished sub-standard product riddled with bugs, microtransactions, and godawful game design meant to turn everything grindy. The fanbase made hilarious Fallout NV and 4 mods that poke fun at 76’s most foundational flaws. There’s a Skyrim 76 mod, too. It’s great, go check it out. They’re all great. True Fans of any given piece of media have a genuine love for that media, and that’s all it takes to be a true fan. Cultish devotion to a piece of media, a crush on a fictional character or actor in the media, or hatred for criticism of the media DO NOT make you “More” of a fan than someone who just genuinely loves the media. True fans aren’t just sleeping slaves to fate, they want the product they’re paying money to get to be the best it can be and they want the artists and writers and whatever else making it to improve, that’s why the Pokemon fandom is revolting over Game Freak cutting the National Dex after a long history of putting up with GF’s habit of removing features. If “Let People Enjoy Things” ever started as an honest thing to say to someone genuinely trying to nitpick a piece of media and/or insult others for liking it, it has devolved into a Stock Saying for bad fans of bad products to say to dismiss legitimate criticism and insult anyone who interrupts their pro-Skub echo chamber by saying anything like “I don’t like that show”
or “I liked that show for a bit but it lost the plot from episode 16 onwards”
or “Fairly Odd Parents was great but Chloe and Sparky really ruined it for me”
or “Meta Knight in Brawl is way too powerful and he makes the game unfun, let’s play Project M instead”
or “During the Rey and Kylo VS Red Guys fight in the new Star Wars movie, there are multiple points where the actors are late on their choreography and the Red Guys have to swing their weapons up and miss on purpose or stop and spin and wait for their turn to be blocked. And at one point, a guy with a laser dagger in each hand wraps an arm around Rey and could easily backstab her with his free hand, but the dagger in his other hand is just… erased in post production like a boom mic. Jackie Chan fight scenes from decades ago are way better and were made with half the budget, are such annoyingly easy-to-fix mistakes like a bad take making it into the final cut really something that should just be accepted forever in Star Wars, a major multi-billion-dollar IP?”.
Sorry for the rant, I just really needed to get my anger for this stupid concept off my chest. I have no anger for the actual episode, I just didn’t enjoy it and it could have been easily turned into one of the show’s best episodes, a fun love-letter to fans instead of an angry hate-letter to former fans.
The “sexual character creation tab” joke was a clever pun I forgot the explanation of. Sorry about that.
