On the Importance of Alicorns: Or, why framing devices are key to good stories.
First off - this, like one of my previous threads, is a compressed version a blog by JawJoe on fimfiction. All original credit to him.
Of the most common reasons I hear for why people liked Friendship is Magic, many share a common theme: "The show felt comfy." "The characters were relateable." "The world was fantastic and interesting." "It was child-friendly without being dumb." There's a lot of buzz-words in these, but I think they can be rendered down to a simpler statement: Friendship is Magic let you enter the Magic Circle. "What the hell does that mean?" It means you let yourself be whisked away to a distant fantasy land of ponies and magic - suspending your disbelief that all the magical, fantastic, and wacky things that can happen in Equestria do and putting yourself in a different state of mind while watching the show.
From the very start, Friendship is Magic primed us heavily to be ready to leave our base reality: The very first words of the show are "Once upon a time..." - a classic fairy tale primer-phrase. It's not limited to children's works; see Star Wars' "A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away..." or Lord of the Rings telling the tale of the One Ring. Entering the Magic Circle is not childish; it's *good.
Friendship is Magic was in large part appealing to adults and children alike because it appealed to something deeply primal within us - the desire to depart reality be whisked away into a fairy tail. It launches you not with Twilight Sparkle, but with the mythological background of the world. That's how the show snags you.
Chief at the center of this mythology are the alicorns. Also introduced in that mythological storybook primer, they are head-and-shoulders above the rest of the population - quite literally as well. While they were never intended to be literally-creator-of-the-universe divine, there were certainly some divinely-suggestive elements of them: The constantly moving hair, the power which exceeds other ponies, the living in a city on a mountain that is 50% Minas Tirith and 50% Mount Olympus, constantly looming in the background.
But Alicorns were also something else: They represented adults. In comparison to the childlike-in-personality-and-appearance ponies, Alicorns were the metaphorical adults in the story: Capable of seeing things beyond mere ponies (Celestia's future sight), changing things with a whim that ponies had to work at (Sun and Moon, Luna summoning storms in a moment), and descending from on high to dispense wisdom and advice to their ponies.
Perhaps most importantly, Alicorns - and Celestia in particular - verified with the immutable authority of an adult-figure that what was going on in the show was good and right by accepting Twilight Sparkle's letters. To both adult and child viewers, they guarded the boundary of the Magic Circle. For us, it was a framing device: Our adult window into this world that cast Twilight Sparkle and the rest of the ponies as children learning about it and taking their first steps into adulthood. Through them, we too could look on and be proud of the mane cast. To children, the alicorns verified that what was going on in the show was good, true, and right. When a letter was sent to Celestia and accepted, it confirmed that had happened was acceptable too. The entire show was equivalent to children playing in the sandbox while their parents watch from a bench on the side.
(There is also a whole lot I could add here about the way ponies control the world - but for brevity, I think I will save that for another week.)
And then something went terribly wrong.
Involving alicorns in the central story is a risky proposition at best. And I say that as someone who loves the Royal Sisters and wishes we could have seen more of them.
I could write a whole bunch more about how pacing issues and running-time limitations have hamstrung this show, but what it comes down to is this: Because of those limitations, the alicorns became dumb. Stupid. Incapable of planning in any rational fashion. Lacking core traits you would see in any national leader, let alone ones with such lifespans. Weak. Helpless. Plot fodder. Not flawed - flawed is good, and I would argue that the alicorns (or more specifically, the Royal Sisters) have always been flawed.
But worst of all, they became boring. For the original Sisters, their roles no longer impactful and serious. For the introduced trio, their being alicorns has barely any bearing on the narrative and setting at all - which you might think is good. And maybe it is, in the short term; after all, just a few weeks ago I was bemoaning how much Twilight has changed. But it also seriously crippled the overarching narrative. All that adult-child symbolism is lost when becoming an alicorn turns out to be pointless and largely irrelevant. The mythology - and yes, there was mythology there; the constant symbolism of control and chaos, independence and community; these things are important! - was broken. And with it, the lens through which we saw the world cracked.
One thing I've heard recently is that the lessons sometimes seem very "on the nose", "blunt", or "anvilicious" compared to how they used to be. I think the breaking of the Magic Circle has much to do with this: The existence of the Magic Circle - the adult lens through which events could be viewed - allowed more nuanced lessons to be taught by providing verification that what we saw was okay. Now, no longer are the cast obviously themselves learning, their lessons summed up in letters or journal entries to an adult figure. Now lessons are taught directly to the audience, and so must be simplistic enough to be acceptable to child viewers without passing through the Magic Circle.
I think we need look no further than this season's premiere to see the impact of this. In both School Daze and The Best Night Ever, the central cast confronts an entrenched societal establishment with assumptions on how they should act. In both cases, the conflict breaks into the open and verges on disaster. In TBNE, however, Celestia is able to step in as an adult figure and verify that she's okay with what just happened. Thus, neither the M6 nor the rest of the Grand Galloping Gala go-ers are shown totally right or wrong - although, amazingly, I'd argue more of the right falls on the other guests than the M6 - but both flawed and mistaken. Even so, it's still a happy ending; we got a nice "do your own thing" lesson while still clearly showing the flaws in applying that blindly. Now look at School Daze: Twilight and her friends are right. End of story. There's no room for nuance or even-handedness; who is Good and who is Bad must be abundantly clear. Just in case we were missing that point, the writers add in a dash of racism to Neighsay so we can be super-duper sure he's a Bad Guy. Even when Celestia is involved, she seems confused and flip-floppy about what is right and how important the EEA is.
One final note: Please don't take this as me saying the show should never have changed. It's probably the number one response I see to this discussions - "You're just afraid of change! You just liked things the way they were! You don't want characters to evolve!" - and it drives me nuts.
No. I'm not saying that things should never have changed. I'm saying that what has occurred is not the ideal situation and has introduced some very serious flaws in the framing and delivery of the show's narratives.
And if you reached this point, thank you for sticking through my ramblings.
Submitted April 19, 2018 at 09:28AM by Logarithmicon
via reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/8dfhrh/on_the_importance_of_alicorns_or_why_framing/?utm_source=ifttt
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