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THANK YOU, that’s what’s been bothering me about this; the reason minorities form up into Ethnic Towns in the first place is so that they can hold onto their unique culture and customs in a space where they don’t have to assimilate in order to get by day to day; if the Dragons are all together in one place rather than just here and there and wherever, it means that the culture they have there is their own, not just a Pony-shaped version.
If they assimilated into the town I could draw that conclusion. Instead, it’s more likely that they are retaining much of their own culture and customs, and rejecting those aspects of dragon culture that are incompatible with peaceful coexistence with other species. Every species can do that, it’s just called “not being a dick.”
that’s a far cry from “appropriating pony culture.”
all dragons that we’ve seen so far have been complete assholes
And if you lived in Ferguson, Missouri, all the cops you’d have seen so far would be violent racist pieces of shit; that doesn’t give you anything like an accurate assessment of law enforcement officers in general. We’ve only seen asshole Dragons and apathetic Dragons so far because those were the only props those episodes needed; we have no idea what sort of culture or society they might have anywhere else. It’s entirely possible that there are other more permanent communities elsewhere that just don’t like visitors, and we just haven’t seen them yet; our knowledge of Dragons, as an audience, is limited by the source material. We didn’t know there was such a place as Vanhoover until the official map was released after Season 2, and it’s still never been mentioned onscreen; that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist in Equestria, it just means they haven’t bothered to tell any stories set there.
so dangerous that ponies can’t study them in detail, and thus, have very little recorded knowledge on them
Up front, I agree with your point, even if I do think you’re being unnecessarily obnoxious about it; a previously unmentioned Dragon community is kind of a big deal to toss into the mix. Remember, though, that everything we “know” about Dragons so far is coming from the residents of a podunk farming town in– literally!– “flyover country”, and from a highly sheltered Book Nerd who canonically didn’t give a maneflip about anything other than studying magic for most of her life and who has a recurring tendency to mistake “what she knows” for “everything that anyone anywhere knows or could possibly know”. Dragon Town might be common knowledge to most of Equestria, and Twilight had never heard of it because it was something established within the last few decades and she doesn’t care about anything that happened within the last few decades since it’s not full of legendary wizards an’ shizz.
@Itsthinking
it was the ‘‘migratory’’ dragons that are the bad ones
Because they didn’t adopt pony culture
Is it ever explicitly stated that those are the only two options? There’s an awful lot of as-yet unexplored territory in Equestria, and a lot of room for stable Dragon communities that don’t follow Pony culture at all.
@DanielTepesKraus
Fires start happening around the fire breathers
That automatically makes them potential suspects by virtue of the fact that it’s a possibility
The Spouse is always the first Suspect, because most of the time The Spouse is The Perpetrator; whether they did it or not, you have to clear that most-of-the-time suspicion before you look anywhere else. That doesn’t stop innocent spouses from clamming up or feeling persecuted.
It wouldn’t be weird to see a dragon town. But an actual town, of only dragons. Dragons of differing sizes that live in a uniquely dragon way. Is it really hard to invent something like “Younger members of dragon society are starting to respect those who choose not to be greedy for the good of everyone else?” Instead of “dragons become ponies in dragon bodies by renouncing their culture unless it benefits them?”
It’s Whitley trying to do some “majority police vs minority” story and not realizing that not only are ponies and dragons different species, they’re also fictional and don’t have relations like this. Whitley himself confirmed that the police chief had it right when he said it was the “migratory” dragons that are the bad ones. Because they didn’t adopt pony culture.
Not worth trying to wrap our heads around because Whitley sure didn’t.
Dunno. Truth be told, we’ve yet to actually see this so-called dragon culture outside of a few dickhead teenagers and the “dragons” in the comic.
That’s the problem with using fantasy creatures to tell racial commentary: there aren’t as many parallels as some people think and it makes telling the story tricky (though not impossible; it can be done). It’s very difficult to equate accepting “massive intelligent fire-breathing mythical monsters that live for millenia” to accepting “guy down street who wears turban and speaks with accent”. There’s too big of a gap.
As for that police chief, are we expected to see him as wrong in any way for suspecting the dragons? Fires start happening around the fire breathers. That automatically makes them potential suspects by virtue of the fact that it’s a possibility. Them “refusing to talk to the chief the second the fires started” validates the police chief suspecting them. That is suspicious as hell.
How is it blind if I’ve gone into detail numerous times as to why it’s not good?
You summed it up nicely. I think Whitley realized he screwed up once people pointed this stuff out to him. I missed the police chief saying that. It’s not even supposed to be a bad thing that he’s saying, just a fact.
So a dragon raised by dragons in a dragon culture can’t ever be good? They have to adopt the culture of ponies?
Haven’t you been humiliated enough for your blind cynicism? If people want to intelligently discuss the comic, unsub from the topic and let them.
-Lumino
Shit, that’s a good point.
Aren’t SJWs constantly bitching about “cultural appropriation”? Well, shit, this is some actual cultural appropriation, or at least a subset of it. Apparently as a dragon you’re only good if you act like a pony, you can’t have dragon customs and still be a good person.
I’m pretty sure that’s what racist propaganda in the 50’s said under the guise of being “pro-negro”.
After giving it some thought, I agree 100% that the message in this comic was worse than Dragon Quest. Consider this: He found that the “message” in Dragon Quest was toxic yet inadvertenly had the exact same message with his dragon characters.
In Dragon Quest, the underlying implication that Spike had to “change his race and act like a pony” to be a good guy was merely a footnote, with the moral proper being that “your family are the ones who raised and loved you” (which, I might add, as a person who lost his parents at a young age and was raised by stepparents, is a message I really strongly support). The “act like a pony” implication is there, but only if you dig around for it, and thus has no more impact than the implication that Twi may have killed the Pinkie clones or that Celestia may be a poor leader. In the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter.
This comic on the other hand went well out of it’s way to attack the idea that spike had to “change his race and become a pony to be decent”. That, in and of itself, was the moral. And yet he turned right around and, for lack of a better word, “ponified” his dragons to basically be a little group of Spikes. They follow pony customs, act like ponies, and merely preach “we’re dragunz nut evvil”. The entire message falls flat on it’s face because it still basically implies that wild dragons are evil and barbaric, and even flat-out says they are worse than the so-called “domesticated” dragons:
It’s really not that big of a deal; don’t get me wrong, despite how I’ve overanalyzed it I’m not foaming at the mouth mad or “offended oh noes” or anything. It’s social commentary; it’s meant to be analyzed and make you think. I’m just saying, that when you’re going to preach about how bad a message was and about how superior yours was, well, you’d better not inadvertenly deliver the exact same message.
It would have worked if this story wasn’t as bad as Dragon’s Quest.
Actually, it’s even worse, Spike had better characterization in DQ.
Yeah. That comic had to make way too many jumps to make it’s story work. There’s enough “Then whys?” and “but thens” to fill a college essay.
Which is too bad because I see what this writer was trying to do, and if he had not been so hell-bent to take a potshot at Dragon Quest the story would have worked and would have been really good.
People were complimenting the Breezies as being world building? Pretty much all I saw was complaints about G3 and making the episode a toy commercial, complaints that started well before the episode was aired.
I agree. I don’t really care for the comics at all, because they not canon.
But I’m not a writer.
And good thing too. My story would be so bad the entire franchise would feel it.
Err the dragon drama to be more specific, but yeah, still pretty sure I”d need an ambulance.
If I’m noticing gaping plotholes, you as a storywriter failed to either cover those plotholes, or make the story entertaining enough for me to overlook it.
If “better” means more retarded.
I could say that maybe she appeared later for the photo, but I have a better argument: Maud is fun. And thus, I am willing to overlook minor plot holes that her existence created.
Dragontown… Is not fun, it’s just there to “make a point” in a story that’s not particularly fun nor interesting. Thus, I am not as willing to excuse said plotholes.
The problem is that nothing in the world stops making sense when Pinkie has an extra sister. Little retcons like that can be handwaved.
One extra sibling, beloved just like the others, is one thing. An entire peaceful town consisting of one character’s race, after much mystery and angst over his race, is quite another.
You can’t say these are the same.
Actually, the Pinkie one does. Rewatch “Cutie Mark Chronicles.” It’s flashback to Pinkie’s orgin, and family only shows she has two sisters.
Yet, “Pinkie Pride” (Season 4) shortly before the Maud episode showed Maud in the picture from her “first party” in it, even though she didn’t appear in that episode. You could just write-that off as “maybe she was off-screen,” but that excuse could be applied to the stuff in the comics to. Still, you can’t deny they pulled her out of nowhere. (Though, I kinda like Maud, don’t get me wrong.)
So the show has contridicted canon/continuity at times to.
The difference being that those don’t contradict previously established canon.
Pinkie has a third sister? Nopony ever said she didn’t. Breezies? They just weren’t relevant to the stories before. Peaceful Dragon Community? Uh, hold on, all dragons that we’ve seen so far have been complete assholes uncaring about anything that isn’t themselves who are so dangerous that ponies can’t study them in detail, and thus, have very little recorded knowledge on them. Why all of sudden there’s an entire community of them in one of Equestria’s biggest cities? When did this happen? This requires further explanation.