Unfortunately Not.

I tend to look at things from a Doylist perspective and, to me, Pound and Pumpkin Cake are clearly only that powerful because it makes the plot of Baby Cakes much more interesting.

edited 7th May '13 12:12:21 PM by PurpleDalek

I usually prefer Watsonian, but MLP pretty much requires a Doylist perspective on most things.

What's the difference?

Watsonian is an in-universe explanation, Doyalist is an out-of-universe explanation.

Ah ok.

Hang about, who's The Other Steve?

He's the other Steve. I thought that would be obvious?

Sorry, I saw that the latest poster was The Other Steve and I thought "Wait, what?"

This is hell of a greeting for him. Hey!

I can't be far from a bathroom at the moment.

In other news...I'm having fun designing pie bald Limie ponies!

Anyone who says that you need to use a Doylist perspective for FIM is wrong by my example. I pretty much always use a Watsonian perspective for everything. I was actually shocked by the discovery of the Doylist perspective. The concept was completely alien to me.

Asi said, it's still within the bounds of what we've seen in the show. I'd barely raise an eyebrow if Pinkie bit through steel in an episode.

edited 7th May '13 12:50:05 PM by Sereg

For the most part yeah in 'verse explanations are better, but sometimes you DO need to step back and realize it's still a show. At worst, throw in Unreliable Narrator and The Theory of Narrative Causality

edited 7th May '13 12:53:04 PM by Seraphem

I don't know what to do.

Yeah, those are fine, though reliance on the second should depend on the setting a bit.

(I try to immerse myself in a setting, refusing to acknowledge that it's fiction, seeing it as a recording of real events. That's how I engage with it.)

Same here, I like to imagine the episodes as recordings of their lives.

I personally think you're losing something by completely dismissing the possibility of out-of-universe explanations, but that's just, like, my opinion, man.

Basicly yeah I treat them like recordings or windows into their lives, and just accept that there is some distortion or dramatization going on. The major stuff is right, the minor little things might get a bit muddled

Seraph: The Life of the Elements of Harmony as Told by Pinkie Pie?

@Sereg: I get that you like explaining everything from a purely Watsonian viewpoint, but you should remember that 1. not everyone views fiction that way, including the people who made the show and 2. trying to do that is going to result in inconsistencies that border on the absurd. I like trying to explain everything in-universe, but I do think there's a point at which you sometimes have to go "it's just toon physics and not a literal indication of how things work in that universe". You might disagree, but a lot of people see it that way, and it's something you have to take into account when writing fiction.

Also, faucets often aren't that strong; a lot of them are made out of plastic that's painted to look metallic, and even metal taps can get really brittle if they're old. I could easily snap the one in my kitchen, and I'm hardly super strong.

Yeah, like, maybe there was a camera glitch, or a typo, or the person who drew their portrait made a mistake or simplified something, but yeah, basically it's a recording of real individuals' lives.

EDIT:

I just don't see such things as inconsistencies. I don't see how they contradict anything already established, but okay.

Fair enough.

edited 7th May '13 1:42:16 PM by Sereg

@ Kuroi

MAKE FIC OF THAT PLZ

I generally prefer the Watsonian perspective, but there are occasions where I prefer a Doylist look. Like in Sonic Rainboom for example, I assume the animators weren't precisely calculating Dash's speed and the angle of her mach cone, and she wasn't really pulling whatever crazy number of Gs someone figured out.

@Sereg: I just wish writers were perfect enough so that that wouldn't happen.

@JT: Editted in a response to you.

EDIT:

I must admit that assuming Dash really is that powerful is necessary to result in the awesome that is Harmony Theory, which justifies everything with it's mere existence.

edited 7th May '13 1:45:47 PM by Sereg

I'm just speaking in general, not in regard to this specific question. It's just that I think the authors expect readers/watchers to assume that some things aren't taken literally. I.e. when a manga character goes chibi the author doesn't expect you to assume that they're literally shrinking. For me, toon physics falls under that kind of thing. It's not literally happening, but it's more interesting to show that than to show what such a thing would realistically look like.