Vulnerability is good: Or, why protagonists should be wrong.
...or, "is moral ambiguity good?"
Recently a thread was written on how the show's writing staff has changed the show. In the comments, a very different point was brought up: The question of vulnerability of characters. In this thread, I hope to take a deeper dive into what that means and why it was so critical to the show's success.
On vulnerable characters.
This aspect in particular struck me, because when you get down to it many of the Element-Bearers were profoundly vulnerable characters in the early seasons. Sometimes it's psychological: Our central protagonist is Twilight Sparkle, a neurotic pony who can sometimes barely function outside the realm of books and schedules. Applejack clearly feels the pressure of being the fulcrum on which the Apple Family weighs. Despite bearing Generosity, Rarity display a striking self-centeredness and manipulativeness. But sometimes, it's even more than: Applejack is fearful because the Acres always seem to be little more than one bad harvest away from financial ruin. Rarity does, in fact, get her dreams kicked in repeatedly. Rainbow Dash does, in fact, lose a long-time friend.
I would argue this is one of the core values which made the characters interesting to us. They are convincingly vulnerable, and so the are sympathetic. We understand their goals, and so rationally understand what they fear losing. Disappointing a mentor or teacher? Not being able to support family? Being rejected by friends? Who hasn't feared these things? And so in turn we emotionally connect the characters. I wrote before on how the fandom is intrinsically linked to the concept of self-expression; yet, this is so because we recognized the cast as being complete characters - including flaws and vulnerabilities.
Let your heroes fail.
At some point, this began to change. A terrible conversion came over the show: The primary cast became invulnerable.
I'm not going to argue why this is. There are fair points to be made that it represents the views of current staff operators, that it's a symptom of the show being purely episodic and having the characters overcome their greatest flaws early on, or that it's just a consequence of writer turnover without a central, guiding figure. All could be true; I'm not interested in playing the blame game.
Whatever the cause, what began to occur is that the characters acted with relative fearlessness. In doing so, they ceased to struggle. We no longer saw them walk into a situation with anything less than total confidence that they would succeed. Now, to be totally clear: I'm not talking about whether they appeared confident or not. I'm talking about cast confidence. We began to see them walk into situations with the utter confidence that they would succeed. I think, in essence, that's what the oft-repeated criticism of "X learned this lesson already" really gets at: "Because this character has already experienced this situation, I as a viewer cannot believe they are vulnerable enough to lead to real consequences."
Eventually, however, it extended even beyond repeat-situations. Any tangentially or superficially similar situation could be approached with that same expectation, until it encompassed virtually any situation where the M6 encountered anything outside their main group. There was no longer any sense of vulnerability about them. They would be proven right, over and over.
Which is problematic, because the ability to not succeed is a critical part of character writing: They must have goals, obstacles, and flaws - and from those flaws, a failure mode. Giving your characters a failure mode is absolutely necessary. This, I think, is also why the Student 6 have fundamentally failed to catch my attention: What characterization we have seen from them has yet to reveal a goal, obstacle, or flaw - and, critically, a failure mode - for any of them.
Is moral ambiguity good?
First, to be clear, when I speak of "moral ambiguity" I am speaking very specifically of presenting situations where no one character is not necessarily 100% in the wrong, or another 100% in the right. They may be right in some ways and wrong in others.
Given that this is a show where the villains are not going to succeed wildly Game of Thrones-style, it is my sense then that this ambiguity becomes somewhat critical to the creation of good narratives. Your question isn't "will the good guys succeed" (of course they will; it's a cartoon that needs to bring in a younger audience) but how will they succeed. What will they learn in the process?
Unfortunately, the above-mentioned invulnerability of character carries with it complete and total lack of moral uncertainty. Our protagonists become unquestioned paragons, and anyone outside their group inherently clearly in the wrong. They will never learn anything from an outsider, because that would imply they are wrong about something in the first place. What we're left with, then, is characters who were just right all along - unchallenged by what they face. And personally, I find that profoundly boring.
The few moments they do end up acting "in the wrong", it often comes off as the characters behaving bizarrely - specifically because their vulnerability to those situations has already been approached.
What do you think? Is there sense in this final point? In any of what I say here? Or is this all "barking up the wrong tree"?
Submitted April 04, 2019 at 09:40AM by Logarithmicon
via reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/b9eb2e/vulnerability_is_good_or_why_protagonists_should/?utm_source=ifttt
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