Oh, torinusto351 had a pretty cool interpretation about what Cabin in the Woods shoulda-woulda-coulda been.
If that really was the underlying theme the potential for some seriously amusing meta-fiction had struck right at home with me.
Taking the appeal from the smart-alecky aspects of horror fandom. Throwing them into the clichéd franchise trappings and forcing them to stand up against the one’s churning out stupid crap like Cabin in the woods for example.

I don’t remember having said anything about this at all, Thomas Pandich – in fact, I’m pretty sure I said one of the things I liked about CABIN IN THE WOODS was that it made the point the kids were being manipulated into characters they didn’t really fit. You and Paul, OTOH, said it quite a lot, so I guess you both felt the characters were really underdeveloped….

Like Invid Ninja (among others), I really prefer Seventies/early Eighties horror films to what’s out now, which feels like it has no real transgressive qualities to it, and a very (though not in the way I usually mean it!) conservative view. Everything any more really does feel like torinostu351 describes it, as coming off a checklist of what they can afford/are told will sell rather than the creators really digging into What Makes Their Flesh Creep. You might say that’s because All The Good Monsters Are Taken (that’s certainly a background theme in CABIN IN THE WOODS, where they show knockoffs of popular horror franchise characters as “action figures” for their rituals!) – but they were saying that back in the Seventies when Carpenter redefined horror with a big guy in a solid-white Shatner facemask or Coscarelli turned a kids’ movie into a fever dream of horror/SF, Cronenberg married the cold clean civilized surface of Canada with his own horror/fascination with Things That Erupt Out Of You, or later when Barker took what looked like Friday Night at a S-M Club and took it…further. And I haven’t even touched on the movies being made in Europe and China at that time!

Now that we’ve got low-cost, high quality HD video and editing gear available, I’d like to start seeing some genuinely innovative and disturbing horror features start getting made once again by North American filmmakers. Since that kind of film was always in the minority against a mountain of successful knockoffs and schlock, I guess that means I’ll have to tolerate Eli Roth’s torture porn – though I do hope that he realizes his real strength is in sick humor….

In essence, the Old Ones = Studio Execs, the control center workers are the writers/producers/directors, who are tasked with churning out horror films (it’s all about the formula) to make a profit. The undead hillbillies are the horror element decided upon by the studio despite all the great ideas the writers came up with because that’s all they could do with the budget they were given. The college students are the fans who are allured by the marketing, go willing to sacrifice themselves (giving money, rather than blood), but usually end up just being abused by the studios pumping out another rubbish film. And regardless of the fan rage that ensues, they can’t change the process. They have to keep going, sacrificing themselves, to appease the Old Ones so more movies get made, in the hope there will be a good one someday.

Of course, maybe I’m giving the movie too much credit because in this analogy, it doesn’t matter how the movie ends because the studios will always win, eventually. Or did Paul actually say something like that in the podcast?

This is comes into MLP in the form of the cutie mark. The cutie mark represents some innate quality in the pony, but they cannot know what that quality is until they do the action. When they do, they have the moment of clarity and the cutie mark appears.

The whole thing with Twilight becoming an Alicorn is the same thing. She has the innate qualities of a princess. But those innate qualities can only be realized through the actions she performs. Princess Celestia helps the process along by putting her in the situations and giving her challenges where her innate princess qualities will come out, and once all of those qualities come to the surface then she becomes a princess.

It can be summed up like this:
Destiny = Innate Qualities + Situation

You could also replace “Destiny” with “Choice” or “Actions” or even “Change”. I think the theme of MLP is that you have to work hard to come to the realization of who you are and what your destiny is.

There’s more to say about it, but as far as MLP is concerned, that’s the idea they are trying to get across.

Insightful point about modern horror. One reason I’ve been thinking about AoT perhaps more than it really deserves is because I’ve felt very blah about new hard-R violence/gore for the last few years (TV as well as movies) and I’m just realizing that maybe it’s not something I outgrew, it’s just reflecting a systemic flaw in that stuff. I had been chalking it up to the fact that AoT isn’t nihilistic (e.g., even with where Mikasa is at emotionally late in episode 7, she still says she believes the world is beautiful.) But you’re right that the characters are treated differently than in recent “hard” things I’ve watched. I’m tired of antiheroes and/or deliberately irritating cannon fodder in every horror movie and dark cable drama.

Also FOX is attacking the Bronies, I guess that’s news now.

So a little evil versus great evil? If I was in those shoes, I don’t know what I’d decide.

Anyway, if these mad gods kill everyone, then isn’t this the Blade 1 conundrum? If the vampires slaughter/turn all humans, then who’s left to munch on? If the gods need sacrifices, then what do they do when the earth is bereft of humans?