Areas where you'd respectfully disagree with Chuck

[Mecha82]

Well sure Oa (home planet of Guardians and Green Lantern Corp) has some good prison facilities that can hold some powerful criminals but I assume that Green Lanterns have some rules involving criminals like Joker that are responsibility of they home planet. I can think that that's only reason why they haven't taken Joker or any other Earth super villain to be held on Oa.

[SpacePaladin]

In his speech on cognitive dissonance, if he's talking about who I think he's talking about, then Chuck's assessment fails to take into account one important detail: the figure that the author was 'being corrected' on actually predated them by several years (and was in one of the more authoritative works in the franchise). It seems to me that it was less likely that them being corrected was offensive, and more, being constantly 'corrected' over something they didn't even come up with in the first place and was instead given to them by their superiors that they trusted over randos on the Internet was what was frustrating.

Add to that some really nasty behaviour they were subjected to on other boards, and as a result they might not have been able to separate the legitimate (or at least well-meaning but misdirected) criticism from the flames that culminated into full-on death threats.

Which, to be frank, is an entirely different set of cognitive dissonance. "A dispute over the size of a fictional army is a perfectly reasonable thing to make a video depicting myself gunning down my debate opponents."

[Dragon Ball Fan]

I am still very disappointed that Chuck never brought up the one big shortcoming of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, that it has a complete lack of consequences and accountability for characters who do reprehensible things. characters like Discord and Tempest Shadow from the movie are war criminals, type A if nothing else.

and the show doesn't even show consequences for kid characters doing wrong things. like in "The Hearth's Warming Club" Gallus, despite what the episode says, was clearly self centered and demenstrated a lack of understanding of friendship but still got what he wanted because he pulled the pity card and was a Karma Houdini. which that and Easily Forgiven are major pet peeve tropes for me. what is this gonna teach kids, that they can get away with anything no matter how bad as long as you apologize or feel bad about it?

[Thebestoftherest]

You make a good point, but people are scare it might cause the kids to stop watching. It is a business at the end of the day.

[Deledrius]

what is this gonna teach kids, that they can get away with anything no matter how bad as long as you apologize or feel bad about it?

I haven't seen the later content, only the early seasons. What's the recidivism rate so far? Do the bad guys stay good once they've repented?

[Dragon Ball Fan]

what is this gonna teach kids, that they can get away with anything no matter how bad as long as you apologize or feel bad about it?

I haven't seen the later content, only the early seasons. What's the recidivism rate so far? Do the bad guys stay good once they've repented?

I'm gonna give a bunch of examples.

for Discord:

in "Twilight's Kingdom" regardless of weather the Mane Six being antagonistic to Discord when they were supposed to be reforming him contributed to it, he betrayed Equestria and helped the reimagined G1 villain, Tirek, drain all the magic from every single pony in the land. and I just can't believe no one died since draining the Pagasis' magic made them drop out of the sky.

sure, Discord had his own magic sucked out by a double crossing Tirek and gave them the final magic key to unlock the new power that they needed to defeat Tirek but Discord didn't know that would happen and getting backstabbed by his partner in crime doesn't count as being punished. and the last season opener shows that they don't need any special artifacts to use the power of the Elements of Harmony, they can just do it with their own bodies.

"Make New Friends But Keep Discord", Discord is invited to the Grand Galloping Gala and not only engineers a situation where his slime monster plus one floods the dance but tries to throw Fluttershy's new friend into another dimension. it turns out Celestia expected Discord to do all this but what makes you think I'm letting her of the hook either?

"What About Discord?" suddenly, all the mane six are buddy-buddy with Discord except for Twilight, which leads the latter to believe he cast a spell on them and while she was wrong about that, Discord really was alienating Twilight from the group for his own amusement.

"Dungeons and Discords" after bing invited to play a D&D expy with Spike and Big Mac, he turns it real and almost kills them.

"A Matter of Principals". Discord gets pissy about not being involved in Twilight's School of Friendship so he fakes an emergency for the mane six to go solve wile he constantly pesters the one pony left in charge and even endangers the students' lives. and he is apologized to.

and in season nine as a whole, Discord gets the bright idea to boost Twilight's confidence by pretending to be another reimagined G1 villain, free two other villains from Tartarus, bring in another who was on the run and resurrect King Sombra and make them into a Legion of Doom to defeat the mane six and take over Equestria. Which involves almost causing a race war between the pony kinds and attracting the Windigos back which would kill everyone. and yet Discord is the one to suggest turning the three remaining villains to stone to Celestia and Luna even though without him, two of them would still be serving their sentences in Tartarus.

So Discord is a repeat offender traitor and war criminal.

Oh and in the latest Not-Christmas special, Discord tricked Rainbow Dash into bringing a dangerous animal into Twilight's home and almost killing everyone on the off chance Fluttershy would calm the animal down and be the hero of the night.

for Starlight Glimmer:

after her reform, she still brainwashed the main six minus Twilight wile trying to lean a friendship lesson, switched Celestia and Luna's cutie marks which, wile it turned out okay it could have gone very badly which the episode fails to acknowledge, instead insisting Starlight did the 100% right thing. and she's done a bunch of other dangerous and immoral things because of how impulsive she is.

and to expand on what I said about Gallus the Griffon, him and most of the other "Student Six" seem to be rebellious and break rules a lot but to no consequences.

and Trixie, after supposedly reforming after the Alicorn Amulet incident, she is still arrogant and once flat out admitted that she won't lean from her mistakes. also, people like to point out that the Alicorn Amulet corrupted Trixie but she bought it despite the shop owner telling her it was dangerous.

and this happens to the protagonists, even. Rainbow Dash has always been reckless but one time, she sabotaged the weather factory in Cloudsdale but faces no consequences. and she did that because she didn't want her pet to hibernate for the winter, not that the pet was dying or anything, she would just have to wait a few months to play with him again.

and by the time of the episode "Inspiration Manifestation" Spike had already messed up a few times before but now, he decides to not lean from his mistakes and goes into an obviously sinister room in the Everfree Forest castle and take an obviously sinister spell book to try and cheer up Rarity, possesses Rarity and makes her nearly destroy Ponyville. and Spike isn't forced to even help clean up the mess he made and instead, Twilight, Cadance and Luna have to sort it out.

and not at me but I've read some people say to just imagine punishments happening off screen but to me it seems that the show makes such speculation impossible. like after the movie and in the season eight opener, Twilight mentions Tempest Shadow was free to go after all she did and is now spreading friendship and news of the Storm King's defeat to other lands.

and it's not like Equestrian justice is either complete forgiveness or Tartarus for eternity, the comics do make a mention of parole and thus, they must have other forms of reducing a sentence and stuff like that.

and the series can be very hypocritical. in the movie, new side character Princess Skystar defies her isolationist mother to help the main six defeat the bad guy but when her mother comes to get her, she is punished. not saying it was wrong to punish her on it's own but two other characters, a slave trader and a war criminal, don't even get a slap on the wrist wile Skystar is grounded for arguably doing the right thing.

but this isn't just about resitivism, almost all of the reformed antagonists are terrorists or war criminals, you can't just be let off the hook for those things.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

You make a good point, but people are scare it might cause the kids to stop watching. It is a business at the end of the day.

how would it scare kids into not watching anymore? I grew up on lots of shows that had bad guys and even good guys punished constantly, like the original Powerpuff Girls and 101 Dalmatians: The Series.

[CrypticMirror]

Sounds like it is saying that redemption is not a one and done thing, but a journey with steps forward and steps back. That some people, if given the chance, will make it and others won't but you still have to give them the shot anyway. That nobody is irredeemable but it can take multiple second chances, and it is worth giving those.

I think that is a very valuable message. It says the quick and easy punitive mindset is flawed and fallible, and that we need to get more into a long term rehabilitative mindset. I can back that message. Not everybody will make it, but everybody is given the chance to. That is a good thing, nobody ought to be written off.

[Deledrius]

I have to disagree with Chuck's reading of that final scene in An Obol for Charon. My interpretation of that scene is that Stamets and Reno never freed Tilly; from the moment they cut into it and were blasted in the face with spores until the injection by Stamets was an hallucination, at which point they realized they hadn't rescued Tilly. Tilly didn't crawl back into the pod, she was already gone (as we will learn later, she's been dematerialized "organically")

Sounds like it is saying that redemption is not a one and done thing, but a journey with steps forward and steps back. That some people, if given the chance, will make it and others won't but you still have to give them the shot anyway. That nobody is irredeemable but it can take multiple second chances, and it is worth giving those.

I think that is a very valuable message. It says the quick and easy punitive mindset is flawed and fallible, and that we need to get more into a long term rehabilitative mindset. I can back that message. Not everybody will make it, but everybody is given the chance to. That is a good thing, nobody ought to be written off.

This is what I think the message is supposed to be as well, and I agree, it's a good one. Something that a lot of people have trouble with regardless of their leanings is a tendency to treat topics as black & white, as well as belief in some kind of evil essentialism in other humans. Sure would make things simpler if it were so...

[Dragon Ball Fan]

Sounds like it is saying that redemption is not a one and done thing, but a journey with steps forward and steps back. That some people, if given the chance, will make it and others won't but you still have to give them the shot anyway. That nobody is irredeemable but it can take multiple second chances, and it is worth giving those.

I think that is a very valuable message. It says the quick and easy punitive mindset is flawed and fallible, and that we need to get more into a long term rehabilitative mindset. I can back that message. Not everybody will make it, but everybody is given the chance to. That is a good thing, nobody ought to be written off.

but the show does write off some villains, even a child was sent to Tartarus for eternity and later turned to stone and another villain was flat out killed..twice. but villains who are either war criminals or terrorists, don't even get a slap on the wrist. those are stuff you can't just be let off the hook for. like when Linkara reviewed that Superman Christmas comic book with the villains who got off scott free for the attempted murder and kidnapping just because "I'm sure there's good in them" and "it's the Christmas spirit to forgive your foes".

and if Discord keeps backsliding in practically every single appearance he makes, why shouldn't some authority over him put their foot down eventually? in real life, if you commit a crime again after being released from jail, you go back to jail and yes, Equestria does have a justice system like our own as I've already explained.

and this is more just a kid character not getting punished by his authority figure like he should but it a related problem, I realize I wasn't clear enough about Gallus the Griffon for those who haven't seen the episode.

in "The Hearth's Warming Club", someone trashes the decorations at the School of Friendship and if none of the students fess up, they will all at the school and not be allowed to go home for the holidays. it turns out, Gallus masterminded this whole thing so he could spend time with his friends yet not caring about ruining their holidays. and then he gives a sob story about how he doesn't have a family, despite still having a legal guardian and only cares about his friends fighting because it hurts him. yet, the episode treats that last bit as him fully understanding friendship and not needing to stay behind to take extra lessons, it causes the other students to say "screw our families" and stay at the school to throw Gallus a pity party and has Twilight, Gallus' principal, to invite him to her holiday party and her home. Gallus was rewarded for selfishness and vandalism.