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Anonymous asked:

The other day I was thinking about what could be a better backstory for Starlight and I thought, since she's so good at magic and she has a burden to cutie marks, what if when she got hers everyone thought it was fake? Do you think this would be good enough to justify her entire broken philosophy?

lily-orchard answered:

There’s no reason for ponies to think her Cutie Mark is fake. If you’re invoking “Townsponies are randomly assholes today” as a backstory, you’re already fucking it up.

Here’s the rub: Starlight’s backstory is irrelevant. Follow me on this, and maybe you’ll finally get it.

Starlight, Tempest and Stygian both have similar backstories to Gul’dan, a main antagonist from World of Warcraft. In fact, they’re so similar it’s actually kind of scary. The only major difference is that Gul’dan suffers a lot more than either of them do. Gul’dan’s backstory is much stronger than the previous two.

Watch this whole video before moving on.

Gul’dans crimes as a villain are equal to the three unicorns (sidenote: Why is it always unicorns?). He leads a massive army to Azeroth with the intent of completely destroying it at the behest of a larger Master.

You might think that having equal crimes to the three unicorns but a stronger backstory make him more sympathetic. That would be true, if it weren’t for the sheer magnitude of his crimes. Blizzard shows this by having Gul’dan kill characters the audience overwhelmingly likes (Tirion, Vol’jin, and Varian).

You could potentially sympathize with Gul’dan based on his backstory, but at the same time recognize that their actions are irredeemable.

So what makes Gul’dan a much better character than Starlight, Stygian or Tempest is the way in which his story culminates.

You see no amount of sympathy for the three unicorns will make the culmination of their stories (Instant redemption, no punishment for their crime) any less disgusting. 

The problem with these characters is that Hasbro tries to force redemption and sympathetic backstories onto the same kind of villains we’ve always had. You’re taking Tirek and King Sombra and trying to bolt sympathetic backstories and redemption arcs onto them.

The solution is to just pick one. If you want every villain to be redeemed, then just don’t have them go psychotically overboard. Just don’t do that. Stop trying to have it both ways. Just pick one. If you want 100% redemption and every problem to be solved by friendship, then make all the villains equal to Trixie, Diamond Tiara, Moondancer and Gilda.

There’s your solution. If you want sympathetic backstories and redemption, you have to give up the big action-y blowouts and lore dumps. Keep the problems small and domestic.

The problem with Starlight, Stygian and Tempest was that they went comically overboard. If we’re gonna fix anything, let’s make it so they’re not going comically overboard. The backstory wasn’t the problem. The frontstory is the problem. Fix the frontstory.

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Anonymous asked:

You once said on Twitter that autism was a mild inconvenience at most. What do you mean by this?

lily-orchard answered:

It’s a mild inconvenience FOR PARENTS.

It’s a refutation of “Autism Moms” who play the martyr act and act like they’re some kind of hero for raising an autistic child. But it’s also a refutation of bad parents of autistic children.

During my time as a counselor, there were a lot of kids and teenagers who had behavioral issues. Maybe half the kids who were brought in were brought in for this reason. In 100% of those cases, it came back to the parents being extremely stubborn and unwilling to co-operate with the program. Anything that involved their behavior, they were violently resistant to. They expected us to break their child into being perfectly obedient, and that wasn’t what we were there for.

You know the cliche parenting line of “My house my rules”? It’s a handwave to avoid having to explain arbitrary rules to a child. It’s how you avoid doing work as a parent. That is bad parenting, and all children know this. That excuse barely flies with neurotically children, it NEVER flies with autistic children. And that was an attitude held by a lot of these parents.

You know that old stereotype of Asperger’s Syndrome as “petulant, antisocial asshole”? That’s always been a mis-applied stereotype. Antisocial behavior is a symptom of bad parenting, and it’s found in neurotypical children just as often as it’s found in autistic children. But the attitude a lot of parents (and indeed a lot of society) have once they hear an autistic diagnosis is “Nothing is ever my fault anymore, it’s all the autism.”

Ironically an attitude that autistic people themselves are often blamed of having, yet is only found in 0.5% of them. Behaviors that are ordinarily attributed to “Where the hell is your mother?” is instead treated as a symptom of autism because it’s convenient for bad parents. And what bad parents love more than anything else is excuses.

This is why parents used to get so angry with us when we correctly attributed their child’s problems to them and not autism.

A good parent, one who isn’t stubborn and power-thirsty asshole, won’t have this problem because they have actual communication skills. They’re not just copying the crappy tactics their parents did and calling it a day. As a result, kids with those parents rarely came in to see us, and when they did it was for a very specific issue that kid was having that the parent admitted they didn’t know how to handle.

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pinterjeremiah asked:

Do you follow a diet?

lily-orchard answered:

I used to. Then I hit this seven month deluge of endless stress and completely abandoned it.

I’m kind of a complete wreck right now.

[blogjoyfulsweetscollection]

how the fuck do you get stressed. All you do is silly vids on the internet, nothing more

[lily-orchard]

• Ten years of dedicated harassment against me
  
• Years of abuse resulting in a constant doubt of my own sanity
• Trying to address issues in personal relationships and becoming paralyzed by fear that the people involved will turn around and start talking bullshit about me to sabotage my life, caused by three different instances of this happening
• A workload that creates a severe work-sleep imbalance
• Living under the poverty line and being unable to afford more than the bare minimum living conditions, wondering if I’ll make enough this month to keep the power on.
• And a deluge of people dumping all their personal problems on me when I’m already at my breaking point

That’s how the fuck I get stressed, asshole.

[blogjoyfulsweetscollection]

then get a real job

[lily-orchard]

I have a better idea: Why don’t you go fucking choke?

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[lily-orchard]

• Need images for June Roundup MLP Episodes
  
• Google Search “Grannies Gone Wild”
• Immediately regret decision
• Append “MLP” to the end

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Originally posted by secretlymarkipliersbarry

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[discord-trolls]

Truly, it is the greatest of curses.

ft. @honeycrisp-tales

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Anonymous asked:

Have you seen any of Don Bluth’s movies? People praise his 80s works for getting dark and emotional then say his 90s works are weaker for being lighter. What do you think of that?

lily-orchard answered:

Most of Don Bluth’s movies are actually pretty bad.

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Yeah, when you look past Secret of NIMH, American Tail and The Land Before Time, the rest of his works were average at best.

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[patchworkheart]

I wanna address something that’s been on my mind lately. I’ve been afraid to say anything about it because I was afraid of the hubbub it might cause.

But I’m not scared anymore.

Lily and I aren’t friends anymore.

I guess we just kinda grew apart in a way? It’s complicated, but Lily and I have sorta gotten distant, and now we’re not friends. I don’t wanna go into much detail cause it’s mostly a private matter, but I’ve gotten asks about why the podcast I was in with Lily is gone and why she’s gotten uncomfortable with people mentioning me.

A note: I still love Lily and appreciate what she’s done for me. She’s saved my ass more than once and I treasure our friendship. But that’s in the past now.

Don’t hassle her over this. Leave her alone, okay? It’s just over. That’s all there is to it.

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I’m just glad it didn’t end over a screaming match or something like some Lily-hating nutcases will delude themselves into believing.

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Anonymous asked:

I was babysitting an adorable 8-year old and we were watching MLP. It was a Starlight episode, so I was zoning in and out. Then, to bond with the kid, I asked who their favorite character was. She said Pinkie Pie. Then, I asked which is her least favorite. Her response was "I don't like Starlight. She's mean." I immediately gave her some of my candy.

lily-orchard answered:

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Anonymous asked:

Why are bronies so bad at recognizing good villains?

lily-orchard answered:

Here’s an image that Carousel found that explains it really well.

The person who created this image is ranking entirely based on their motivations, and divorced from the actual execution of those motivations.

In reality, villains contain a number of elements that all work together. Motivation is just one of many pieces. There’s also spectacle, presence, performance, FUN, utilization within the story, ect. But it seems that everything but half the motivation is completely ignored.

Take a look at the fact that they put Emily Blunt Force Horse at the very top and the reason they gave was “Motivation is hard to find fault with.”

Intent - Disabled pony rejected by society grew bitter in solitude.
Execution - Pony gets injured through act of willful stupidity, is rejected by two people, never sees a doctor about their condition, and joins a fascist death cult.

I’ve said it before: Tempest was a fun and enjoyable character until they CTRL-V’d Starlight’s story over her.

This mistake is repeated with the Pony of Shadows.

Intent - Pony turned to evil when treated like shit by his friends.
Execution - Pony turned to evil when punished for theft.

The problem ends up being a failure to recognize a simple concept: Hasbro didn’t set out to make a bad character, they tried to make a good character and failed. Intent is important only in regards to recognizing how the writers failed. Beyond that, execution ALWAYS overwrites intent. 

But recognizing that is too hard for most fans, and they just accept that a complex motivation is better on sheer principle.

And it’s obvious that the person who made this chart isn’t looking at anything other than motivation because the top three villains according to this person are also the three most underdeveloped, boring characters in the entire series while the most fun and memorable villains are at the bottom.

Miserable prick this guy is.

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Anonymous asked:

Fandom in a nutshell: "Mudbriar is so annoying! He never stops correcting everything or shuts up with his 'technically' schtick! He acts so smug and arrogant! He's a no-nothing know-it-all because caverns are a subset of caves and that branch Pinkie gave him wasn't a Quercus castaneifolia like he said! The problem isn't Pinkie, it's Mudbriar! If she can't find anything to like about him, why are we supposed to believe SHE'S in the wrong? She has every right to hate him!" Thoughts?

lily-orchard answered:

It seems the fandom in a nutshell has always been easily enraged by minor displays of smugness or arrogance, or what they perceive as someone thinking they’re better than you.

I remember someone tried to counter my complaints about Newbie Dash with “If Rainbow rejected this hazing, that would indicate that she thinks she’s better than them” and my rebuttal was “But she IS better than them.”

It’s a sign of severely stunted emotional growth that they hate it when people correct others or “come across” as arrogant.

Because I’m not a baby, I find Mud Briar rather enjoyable.