Writer's Recap: What Ponies Believe In · 12:40am Mar 31st, 2020
It’s been a while since I started this chapter and I don’t remember all the details, but I’m confident that what started it all was the line, “You weren’t ever a bad friend.”
All we really know about Twilight from the show is that she was hyper focused on studying, and the assumption I feel we were supposed to make was that she just didn’t put a high priority on friendship. If that was the case, though, then why did she always hang around with her friends in Canterlot, and maybe more importantly, why was she able to make friends in Ponyville so quickly? (Obviously, we need to ignore narrative convenience)
Unique among all of her friends from Canterlot — here, at least — was Lyra Heartstrings, who would at all times know what Twilight was feeling, even when it appeared she was feeling something different. That’s why Twilight was never a bad friend; she wanted to be around them, and she liked having friends even back then. But her father told her that one day, if she studied really hard, she could be just like Princess Celestia, and so she studied, at first because she wanted to raise the sun, but later because she turned her parents into potted plants because she lost control of her magic. I think we all know who would never lose control like that.
So, Twilight studied whenever she could make an excuse to, always nervous whether she was with the group or alone; the kind of nervousness that is quiet and jittery, the one that someone feels whenever they know that, today is the day when something finally goes wrong. But she was always happy whenever she was part of the group, even if all she did was study; sometimes, she didn’t feel as nervous, either, but she always studied so she wouldn’t lose control again. Socially anxious, but good enough at seeming fine that no pony would notice.
And so, Lyra said nothing, told no one, and stayed by her all the while, ready if she ever needed her for anything, hoping that today would be the day when Twilight changed for the first time. Twilight may have changed a long time ago, but when she needed her friend, Lyra was there for her.
I’m starting to get questions about changelings not believing in forgiveness, and rather than cover them here or elsewhere, I think I’ll address that in a side story.
I always felt that having Lyra be a schoolmate and friend of Twilight’s was one of the writer’s biggest mistakes, especially coming as late as its reveal did in the series. That the show never truly rectified that lapse friendship as this chapter does I found quite irksome.
An interesting thing to do, especially now given the series has run its course, is to look over gen 4 and see how much better the whole story could have been told, how episodes should be reordered (and arguably could have been as kind of a fan-edit of series continuity were it not for that pesky set of wings Twi gets at the end of S3) for things to make more sense and have better narrative impact.
But that’s why we’re here, to fix such things.
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Honestly, I feel like the reason they included Lyra was for three reasons:
In short, they picked Lyra because that was easy (and she already had assets made). Like most supporting characters who weren't antagonists, though, they never really did anything with her, and maybe that was the hazard of having 6 main characters. Maybe there would have been more story opportunities if the show focused just on Twilight and her navigating the minefield of friendship, but then every single dynamic would have been different. (It might have also prevented Twilight from degenerating from the all-arounder she started as, into the all-books-all-the-time nervous mess she became, but I'm not convinced that would have been better)