Why [Spoilers for Season 3 Finale] is a big deal. Or is it? An Overanalysis/Personal note · 8:52pm Feb 14th, 2013
WARNING: This post has nothing to do with Valentine's Day, and everything to do with the fact that I have another big important deadline and the last thing I have time to do is write an essay about ponies. It's a post about why I think that the big S3 finale spoiler is a bad idea—but mostly it's about why I care so much in the first place, and maybe a look at what there is to care about. It's probably not wholly or even remotely original, but I hope you'll indulge me by reading on.
So much ink (and a not insignificant amount of blood, if the reactions of the fandom are any indication) has been spilled about the revelation that apparently season 3 is going to end with Twilight getting wings and being officially named a princess.
Suffice to say I am with the (apparent) majority of people who were not pleased with this particular piece of news. I was mortified when I first heard about it, tried to hold onto hope that it was a hoax or would somehow be a temporary powerup-type-deal, and ultimately felt rather hurt and betrayed when it was officially confirmed. Not, you know, teeth-gnashing, hair-pulling-out, rending my flesh despair or anything, but hurt. Potentially also butthurt, to use the vernacular of the interwebs.
But I've calmed down a lot since then, enough to talk about why I think I, and a lot of other people, felt those ways. Why the reaction was so negative, at least among the older fans of the show (honestly, has anyone run this stuff by the show's actual target demographic? Maybe there's a half a million little girls who are super excited about it, iunno).
Part of my beef with this season has been, as I like to put it, the emphasis on characters “already being” rather than “becoming.” The dropping of friendship lessons, the idea that the characters were “Prepared for this,” and so forth are a marked departure from the past, and damage previous seasons' focus on... well, learning something new about friendship each week. I've pointed out that this has issues for the dramatic structure of the show in that, without some lesson to be learned, we require other reasons why characters cannot simply solve their problems at the outset of the episode. I've also noted that I find it less compelling when we aren't given the chance to watch characters screw up and learn from their mistakes.
Twilight seems like an especially egregious case of that. The first episodes, rather than being about Twilight learning she has to count on her friends, were specifically about giving her a task she was meant to complete alone. Her reliance on Spike was cast as abandoning her goal for the greater good, not her realizing that her friends are part of her personal strength, and that insisting she go it alone was, in fact, part of the test she had to disregard in order to pass (which is where I thought it was gonna go). Similarly, she learns to “make use of” her friends in Magic Duel, but not in a way that's about their friendship really—and anyway, as much as I love Larson's writing, that episode's got no character arc at all. Twilight doesn't want to fight Trixie, then she agrees to to protect her friends, then she loses, then she realizes how she can win. There was nothing in how she lost that had to do with trying to go it alone.
So that brings us to Twilicorn. When you give a character an obvious “promotion” it's hard to avoid a sense that you're in some way rewarding them. And I just can't really get behind that. This whole season I've been wanting to shout “I loved Twilight already, show! Stop telling me how great she is! Let her be a little messed-up!”
Some of this is the result of how I got introduced to the show. My first episode was “The Last Roundup.” Afterwards, I watched episodes form S2 out of order, watching new episodes as they came out from about “A Friend In Deed” on through the S2 finale. I left the first four episodes of Season 2 for the end. So my first Twilight-centric episode was “It's About Time,” which I adored. Twilight was totally manic, but also totally capable. She takes Cerberus back to Hell, and comes back a day later like it was no big thing. Then I watched season 1 (in order) and its focus on Twilight's character completely sold me on her. Her struggles with fitting in were clever, and fresh, and I respected those elements even in episodes I really disliked, like “Boast Busters.”
I, and I think a lot of people in this fandom, relate to Twilight a lot. On the one hand, that sounds like an absurd thing to say about a cartoon purple talking unicorn, but on the other hand, why not? All characters are fake, after all—we write stories to distill the people and the world around us into things we can actually understand. And Twilight is, well, nerdy, which helps a lot. She'd rather read a book than hang out with a friend sometimes. She's smart and can be a little sanctimonious about that fact, but it's almost always from a perspective of trying to help out. She's compulsively organized, but will let the library fall into chaos if she's got something on her mind.
Also, “Lesson Zero” is me with every assignment I've ever had.
So I relate to Twi a lot, and part of that is I think that she's a true introvert. Not a “pushes people away constantly” Flanderized introvert, just a person who needs a significant chunk of time to herself in order to function. Who feels out of place or uncomfortable in social situations she didn't plan for. People have mixed feelings about the first two episodes of the show, but I spent the whole time adoring Twilight for just being so grumpy about the whole thing. I don't think I'd ever seen a character put in a position where they just wanted some time to themselves, but everyone was trying to force them to make friends. To pull off that arc, and still make it so that Twilight didn't come off as senselessly misanthropic (misequinethropic?) really impressed me (Though I think her reversal in the second episode comes too fast buuuuut that's a really hard fix).
Anyway, now that I've written a love letter to best pony (Valentine's day?), what does that have to do with the Season 3 finale? Well, for one thing, change is scary, especially when it's something you care about that's changing. That's one of the biggest factors, I'm sure. All the assurances in the world that becoming a Princess doesn't change Twilight's personality won't do much good—it is different, and therefore a cause for anxiety.
Television is a genre about the status quo. It's sort of a joke that at the end of the episode, everything is right back to where it started from (and a point of frustration—a TV writer I spoke with once lamented that the network that produced Better Off Ted wanted to be able to show episodes out of order, so they were never able to actually advance the main romantic relationship), but if you think about it, the premise of every television show in the world is “The Daily Life of X.” Your choice of X is what separates Monk from The West Wing from My Little Pony from Kim Possible, but those shows are all about characters' day-to-day existences. TV is almost unique in that regard as well—movies, theater, and novels usually implicitly promise to be about “the day things changed in some big way,” but television is about little changes, changes so small you could almost miss them entirely.
There are exceptions, of course. But not as many as you might think. Joss Whedon, for instance, loves to screw with the audience's expectations regarding the status quo, and there have been shows that set out to tell a more linear narrative. But by and large, the standalone nature of television is a sort of promise: the characters may grow over time, but if you pick up an episode from season 1 and an episode from season 5, things are mostly the same. The fact that television (used to) literally air on a schedule was part of this too: watching a given show becomes almost like a ritual, a thing which we attach meaning to because it does not change, that becomes part of our routine lives.
Most people, don't trust disruptions to their daily lives. It's the same reason why the cancellation of such a show can somehow excite more emotion than reaching the end of a series with an ongoing plot—I've been sad (twice!) to realize that there would be no more afternoons shared with Kim and Ron, despite its positive ending (again, twice), but the end of Gankutsuou, one of my all time favorite anime, fills me only with the emotional residue of the story itself. I don't feel bad that it's over, because its story has ended the way it meant to. But plotless television could go on telling stories forever, and when it inevitably doesn't, it feels like something is missing.
So, Twilight becoming a Princess is a change to a formula, which most of us liked a lot. There's a lot of other reasons why it's an uncomfortable thing: there's an assertion on the part of he staff that Twilight was always on a unique journey, but I'm not sure that's true. Sure she is Princess Celestia's trusted student, but if the whole series so far has been a test or training that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The point of Twilight learning to make friends was to discover that friendships are an important part of life. The lessons that she and other characters learns aren't things with tangible or immediate rewards, by and large: you don't try to be a better friend, or a better person, because it makes you “worthy” of something. You do it because it makes you a better person. Because strengthening your friendships makes your life more rewarding, in and of itself.
My personal concern is that, no matter what attempts are made to keep Twilight the same adorkable bookworm that she is, giving her a royal title and wings will serve to separate episodes focusing on Twilight completely from the episodes focusing on her friends. It means, probably, less room for her to go on being adorkable, and awkward, to make bad social decisions, or to panic over little things (as cute as her “taking a deep breath” thing is, if it's a permanent fix to her freaking out I will be very sad).
In a sense, it feels like the series saying that, although Twilight had to make friends because everyone should have friends, because she isn't an exception, she isn't better off by herself, now she is being placed in some way above and separate from those same friends.
And, as someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about the value of friendship, in part because of this show, and in part because things like graduation are gradually separating me from my own group of friends, I... am not sure how to feel about that. (Though it would certainly be interesting if the show actually went there with Season 4... it's been self-aware in the past, so why not?)
The great Cloud Wander said in a recent blogpost: "these days, I hold her [Twilight] close in my heart, because I'm afraid to let her go." I think he's got the right of it—even if I disagree that the series ought to end with Twi and her friends moving away (I'll get around to my opinions on that when I finish In Search of Lost Friends).
Anyway. Here's hoping in a few days I'll be able to laugh this entire post off.
Side note: Originally there was gonna be some stuff about how getting wings doesn't really change Twi's character. That's a yes and no sorta deal. We associate our identities a lot with physical appearance, and gaining new limbs is a pretty significant change. The role change from "student" to "Princess" also violates a major source of identity, i.e. occupation.
So while, yeah, she could totally be the same person with wings and in a new role... it seems hard to imagine that those things won't change her, won't change how people act to her in ways that forces her to change herself. Which can all be interesting, but it won't be what we've come to know and love.
Nothing to say that's a bad thing. But it's scarier to know it's coming, I guess.
Honestly, I think they have to change the formula. While season 3 wasn't bad, it certainly wasn't as good overall as the first two seasons. They've pretty much shown that by sticking to the same setup throughout the whole series, they're already losing steam. By changing the formula, they can open up new avenues that will keep the show entertaining without getting stuck in a rut. Right now, we have no idea what they're planning for the future of Friendship is Magic, so it's up in the air as to whether they'll take advantage of this change.
Personally, I'm sticking to my plan of "wait and see."
827609 See, I feel like Season 3 was not very good at following the formula, which is why it feels more meh. I've seen people argue that they're out of friendship lessons at this point but, I mean, I feel like that would be a significant failing on the part of the writers to not be able to think of anything more to say about Friendship after 50 episodes. It's a pretty big topic, and it's not like episodes hadn't branched out into being about specific issues not directly related to friendship in the past, it was just that friendship provided the backdrop.
Of course "Wait and see" is the only reasonable response. But I wanted to get off my chest why I personally am frustrated as a way of looking at why the fandom reacted as poorly as it did.
827609 I think that's a non-sequitur. It's fair to say that changing the plot had to be on the cards, but it says nothing about he validity of the change itself. Necessity does not excuse the lazy nature of the rumoured changes. We shall see.
828330
Is it? Hmm... I want to say that it made perfect sense at the time, but I think I missed a step in the process of typing it out. Sadly, that seems to be a running trend in my comments; either I overanalyze it and decide not to post anything at all, or I don't think it through enough and it comes out lacking. It's something that I've been trying to become better at, but it's not coming easily.
828498 After the benefit of sleep, it depends on what your point was. If you're merely suggesting that some kind of change was needed, then that's fine. if you're suggesting that the need for change is any kind of defence for the Princess Sparkle debacle, then it's a non-sequitur (it does not follow that the need for change justifies any specific change).
Put my lack of clarity down to a similar lack of brainpower :P