Whose Fault Is It Anyway: S1E6 Trixie · 11:44pm Jul 16th, 2015
Well, after havin' a bit to say about Gilda, ah decided it couldn't hurt ta do one on Trixie. Yeah, she's easily the most divisive one-shot antagonist in the series, so there should be plenty to say on this list.
Just as a reminder, the primary purpose is to catalog all possible arguments an' maybe get a few good jokes in about 'em. Mah conclusion at the end is solely mah opinion an' ah'm not implyin' it's anything absolute, unless you disagree, in which case yer wrong.
So Trixie rolled into town, got into a fight with the locals, an' then there was a bear an' everything got a little weird. Whose fault was it?
TRIXIE'S FAULT:
1. Trixie was clearly fishing for hecklers, so that she could humiliate them and make herself look better. That was the entire point of her act.
2. She went way too far in her retaliation, especially against Rainbow Dash. Nausea and electric shocks aren't a good combination, and I should know.
3. And her responses weren't really "beating them at their own game", except maybe ruining Rarity's mane.
4. She also gave Snips and Snails the idea to bring an Ursa Major to town.BUT WAIT:
1. How? Before Applejack, Rarity, and especially Rainbow Dash opened their big mouths, Trixie hadn't said one word that should have been considered provocative to any reasonable individual.
3. Her goal wasn't "beat them at their own game", it was "shut them up and make the audience laugh".
4. Actually, Snips and Snails were perfectly willing to take Trixie's word for it. Spike gave them the idea to bring an Ursa Major to town. And they couldn't even do that right! How is Trixie going to prove she's a hero when they can't even get her a real Ursa Major?!
NOT-TRIXIE'S FAULT:
1. Trixie was just doing her job. You know, what she gets paid to do in every town. She seemed perfectly content to just put on a nice, inoffensive little conjuring routine that everyone enjoyed.
2. Applejack can apparently bend space, since she was able to lasso an apple off a tree from the middle of Town Square. Why couldn't she dodge the rope? Or teleport the Ursa home?
3. Rainbow Dash and Rarity knew what to expect when they went up on stage. At that point, they were walking into it willingly and whatever Trixie did to them was their own fault.
4. Until Twilight stepped in, Trixie was the only one who even tried to fight the Ursa. As far as I'm concerned, she really is more of a hero than Rainbow Dash.BUT WAIT:
1. But she sure did have her patter prepared. At the very least, she gets enough hecklers to have a routine specifically for the purpose.
4. But was she really doing the right thing? Or did she just think it was better to go out in a blaze of glory than to be called a coward? (Is the distinction even important?)
Mah conclusion, after all this, is, uh... wh... could somebody tell me what actually happened in this episode? Ah mean, there was a bear, and... there was Trixie... and somethin' about Trixie defeatin' the bear? Who cares about bears these days? Ah wanna know what the plot was! Was there... was there even a plot at all?! Y'know what, forget it, ah'm callin' this NOT-TRIXIE'S FAULT an' lettin' y'all sort this out.
Well, you already know my opinion of Trixie in Boast Busters. ;) But yeah, for me, she did some wrong. But her wrongs were miniscule compared to others, including the Mane 'Three'.
My thoughts on Boast Busters. Considering that Trixie is by far in the top three of my favorite characters, be prepared to sit for a while.
There was fault on both sides. Trixie did lie about having defeated an Ursa Major, but it is possible that she thought that everyone would simply pass it off as part of the act and that the likelihood of being in a situation where she had to prove it was so small as to be negligible. Also, while children would genuinely believe it, there is no conceivable way that anyone could predict that they would bring one into town (clearly she has no idea what Ponyville foals are like). Also, while she was a show off and braggy, as Spike said, it is part of her job. How many would be interested in watching a show if she sat there and just said, "Hi, I'm Trixie, I make flashes of light." She needs to draw in a crowd and, as an added bonus, she did not appear to charge admission to the first show. In this case the first show is more of a preview for the shows that one would pay for and thus would not be a full representation of their abilities. Also, while Twilight is better at magic than Trixie, inarguably so, Spike's whole basis for the claim is that Twilight was the strongest unicorn he had met, just as Celestia did so, without any real comparison of their abilities. But the way Celestia said it made it clear that Twilight was only the strongest unicorn she had met in centuries, that leaves the possibility that there are stronger unicorns than Twilight out there and the Princess simply had not met them yet and that their were unicorn's who surpassed Twilight's magic in the past (and let's face it, Sombra had magic mojo up the wazoo, but he is not a unicorn in the strictest of terms (according to the comics anyway). Most unicorns usually only have a select few spells that relate to their cutie mark, but Trixie has a diverse range of spells and thus (going by Spike's logic) probably had not met a unicorn whose magic was greater than her own and was therefore justified in trying to claim the title of the "Most Magical Unicorn in Equestria". She had weather control, a fire works spell, a mane dyeing spell, a spell that made the rainbow that Rainbow Dash made tangible and in "Magic Duel" she demonstrates the ability to use an attack beam (though her lack of power meant that it could only tickle) without the assistance of the Alicorn Amulet. Trixie clearly demonstrated a talent for magic that the main characters dismissed all too casually.
Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity and Spike hardly gave Trixie a chance. I could see how Trixie's bragging could get on one's nerves, but Rainbow seemed more mad about the fact that someone other than her was bragging and the others hang around Rainbow Dash so they should be used to putting up with bragging (not to mention that Applejack and Rarity have demonstrated that the are quite the braggers themselves). As for defending Twilight's magic as being superior to Trixie, that is somewhat more reasonable. They are defending their friend and Spike is highly familiar with Twilight's skills in magic (she uses him a test dummy after all), though that does not excuse heckling Trixie and ruining the show for others (as well as appearing to take a great deal of pleasure in showing off while doing so). What really grated me was the claims to being the "Most Magical Unicorn in Equestria" and the fact that they judged simply because of who they knew. Using a personal example, my brother is the smartest guy I know, but I would never say that he is the smartest guy in the world. There are too many contenders being judged in too many different ways in order to make a clear judgment. Also, when the Ursa attacked, they all ran away (guess they were not used to dealing with near weekly monster attacks by this point) while Trixie at least risked her life and lost her home (which is implied to have been thrown away like garbage) trying to defend Ponyville. Then she lost her reputation and was, as shown in Magic Duel, barred from trying to rebuild it because of a single lie that might not have even have been meant to take seriously at any point.
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Oh, ah don't think so. Unrelated to Trixie, Spike was absolutely unreasonable. Allowin' the assumption that that actually was his motivation, Twilight didn't want to be defended. She didn't care about the claims Trixie was makin', so Spike tryin' ta turn it into a fight on her behalf was selfish, petty, an' mean.
Overall, well said. Ah guess you could say the episode was about social myopia, the way all of 'em were so focused on their own personal experience.
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Definitely. Y'know, ah think Trixie bein' introduced in episode 6 is part of the reason ah never did like Gilda—because they were both jerks, but compared to Trixie, Gilda was a boring jerk, which is the worst kind of jerk imaginable. It also helps that the protagonists didn't deserve as much of the blame for Gilda's episode as they did for Trixie's.
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That all sounds correct (and fairly well put) to me.