The Myth of Insecure Bullies · 1:10pm Nov 25th, 2012
Blog Number 11: One Bad Apple Edition
While I applaud the efforts of the Friendship is Magic staff to tackle such a difficult issue as bullying (and in their characteristic style), the logical leaps involved in “One Bad Apple” left a bad taste in my mouth, and it’s to do with the depiction of Babs.
The Insecure Bully Myth
The most obvious problem is that she's an unsubtle example of the insecure bully myth. It may be a good source of dramatic potential to have the seemingly obnoxious bully turn out to be a poor victim themselves (as this episode shows), but the notion that bullies pick on others to hide their own insecurities or low self-esteem is based on a myth. Moreover, it’s a myth that keeps popping up in the media despite lacking any decent evidence to prop it up, and this can only get in the way of genuine efforts to understand bullying behaviour.
For a start, bullies tend to have an excessive amount of self-esteem, not too little. Most victims of bullying are the ones with low self-esteem, and who therefore are less likely to stand up for themselves or have any allies on hand to help them. Bullies usually bully to coerce people into doing what they want, though this can later become more about bullying for entertainment, for an enjoyment of being in a position of power, or for revenge or punishment for some unofficial social rule being broken.
Bullies also target those who threaten to pop their exaggerated self-image; they do this not to “hide the truth” but because they have too high a sense of entitlement, and because it gets the message across that you don’t mess with them if you know what’s good for you. The motives of bullies are usually banal: they want something (say, social standing or money), and other people are just obstacles who need to be dealt with. There’s so far been no conclusive evidence to suggest that their desires are products of Freudian self-denial or of projected insecurity.
There is a bystander effect, in which those who should intervene on behalf of the victim end up either ignoring the problem or encouraging the bully. But such bystanders never take centre stage, rarely do more than the minimum to signal that they’re not a threat to the bully, don’t take the initiative as the bully does, have to be intimidated into silence elsewhere, are never close to the victim, and are likely to be just as vulnerable to bullying themselves even if the bully “accepts” them.
Among the peers, bullies are the unofficial authority, the small-scale equivalent of a mafia that lurks out of sight of adult authority. That’s why bullies make a note to foreclose possible “snitches” with threats and blackmail, which in turn is another reason why they prefer soft targets. Sometimes, bullying can be done as a form of revenge, either for real or for imagined slights, but usually for trumped-up charges which only exist because of the aforementioned bloated ego (for instance, harassing someone because they "looked at me the wrong way" or "looked at my girlfriend").
Problems with the Switching Sides Scene
The scene in which Babs turns on the Cutie Mark Crusaders for the first time is an example of how not to go about depicting bullies. The first problem is that Babs is in the same boat as the CMC, so she has more pretext to sympathize with their plight. She’s been there, done that; she knows how it feels. The similarity of the incident alone should have awoken old habits from Manehattan, which leads to the second problem below.
The second problem is that Babs has shown no sign of any of this aggressive behaviour before now; if anything, her self-consciousness has tended to make her silent rather than aggressive or self-assertive, so it doesn’t match up to her prior behaviour. This isn’t too big a problem because someone could always invoke hidden depths, especially for such a recently introduced character. But it casts the logic of her switch into even bigger doubt because the writers have to make such a 180 turn for her personality to make it work, and the switch happens within a matter of seconds.
The third problem is that Babs’ strategy is full of holes compared with the more intuitive alternative. The CMC have more or less been friendly to her throughout her stay, whereas these two are relative strangers to her, resemble her home bullies more, and show no redeeming features. They therefore have a lesser claim to her loyalties than the victims do.
Heck, Apple Bloom breaks rank first by standing up to the bullies, which if anything would have emboldened her cousin to join in, with reasonable certainty that her allies-in-suffering would back her up. What makes the joining-the-bullies strategy less sensible is that the CMC already outnumbered the two bullies, and her alongside the CMC would not only have made her feel less singled-out and given her safety in numbers, but would have given their side a 2:1 advantage.
Even if her motive was to throw the bullies off her tail, she would have done what the CMC did: avoid the bullies in the first place, who were nowhere near as persistent as she was when she took over the bullying role. Hanging out with the bullies puts her in even more contact with them than if she’d tried to avoid them, and makes her their closest (and only) blank flank target if they get bored, effectively making this strategy self-defeating.
The fourth problem is obvious: she’s still a blank flank. The logic of that scene is this:
1. Two strangers come in and begin teasing the CMC for their blank flanks, the implication being that the marks are a status symbol and that the blank flanks are lower on the scale.
2. They then turn on Babs and begin teasing her for the same reason.
3. Babs responds by teasing the CMC, her fellow victims.
4. The two strangers who were attacking her for the same weakness accept her, despite her obvious blank flank.
This makes about as much sense as an anti-Semite accepting a Jew because he expresses hate for other Jews, despite the fact that his dress makes him look more like other Jews than like the anti-Semites.
Moreover, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon accept her despite there being no prior evidence that they’d even welcome this proposal. Their whole basis for picking on the CMC is that their lack of cutie marks makes them “not-special”, whereas the two are special by comparison. Even allowing for the fact that they seemed interested in Babs’ urban background and tough attitude, this still leaves a gaping public contradiction in their anti-blank flank behaviour, and hypocrites simply aren’t that blatant; it’s not like they can deny Babs’ blank flank if challenged.
The fifth problem is that Babs’ ploy to denigrate her fellow victims is too blatantly a self-preserving tactic. Quite apart from the above issue with her being a member of the victimized group, she only did it while being picked on herself, and her viciousness was excessive to the point of compensating. This would at best entitle her to a subordinate position in their clique, possibly as an amusing sideshow. She certainly wouldn’t be accepted as an equal who could bump rumps, for the simple fact that her loyalties are so blatantly slippery. When new members join a group, they nearly always start out at the bottom of the pecking order and it takes time to rise up in rank; there's usually an increase in internal squabbling when this happens. Yet Babs' acceptance skips straight past these issues, and it makes the scene less believable as a result.
Alternatives
To be more consistent, this is how the scene could have played out:
1. Babs would keep quiet until the gruesome twosome have had their fun and then left.
2. Alternatively, Babs would, if she was more assertive, be more likely to try and intimidate the bullies, even if only ineffectually.
3. If she tried joining the bullies, she’d be more likely to receive even harsher treatment from the two for insulting their discretion.
4. On the remote off-chance that she was accepted by them, she’d still be teased and tormented to keep her in her place as a subordinate or as a bystander, not allowed to take the majority of the bullying behaviour.
Even the subsequent revenge plot could be salvaged in two ways: the first by having Babs be a co-victim, shifting the bully role onto the duo; the second by having Babs be a bully early on. For the former, the arrival of a new CMC member is taken as a personal affront by the two bullies, who intensify their behaviour in response to keep the newcomer in her place. For the latter, Babs Seed could have had a cutie mark or have been an unpleasant bully from the start (rather than suddenly switching to one a quarter of the way through the episode). The former could have developed two characters who really needed it, whereas the latter would at least have erased some of the problems above.
Episode Problems
Following this one scene, there are issues with the episode overall. The biggest one is the potential double standard between Babs Seed and the two recurring bullies, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. The former was a developed one-shot given a sympathetic backstory, whereas the latter are just left as undeveloped characters for the sake of being recurring antagonists.
What conclusion are we supposed to be left with regarding these two? That Apple Bloom slighted them in the past and their bullying has been one long revenge on her? That they bully the CMC because they get bullied themselves? Or that some people are just jerks? It’s perfectly possible that the motives of bullies can be as diverse as this, and that this was what the show was after. But that’s not the same as their succeeding in conveying this because, unlike with Babs and the CMC, we don’t get an answer to the particular case of Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon at all. The question wasn’t even raised.
To be fair, the behaviour of the CMC is more realistic; initially trying to avoid the bully, they eventually try to take revenge on her for her misdeeds. The notion that they perpetuate a cycle of bullying-begets-bullying was a well-intentioned one, but in real life it’s not usually true, and the different ways this was achieved with Babs and with the CMC weakens the moral of the story. The basis of their actions ran on different lines to their bully, since their motive was to get revenge rather than to throw the scent off. The former is more realistic than the latter because most people have strong desires to get back at those who humiliate them, and as I’ve already mentioned, Babs’ strategy is a mess. Indeed, revenge is one of the most common causes of violence and abuse in real life.
The episode’s handling of the snitch issue was the best thing about it, and I give the writers credit for pointing out the problems with not discussing bullying with friends and family. This is a message that victims need to hear: that they’re not supposed to “grin and bear it” and effectively suffer in silence, and that bullying is something that has to be brought out into the open rather than hidden away for the sake of peer pressure. Babs’ threatening to tell the mothers of the bullies on them is a little questionable, though, since there was no guarantee beforehand that their mothers would treat their daughters’ bullying as they should do. It’s just as likely that bullying runs in the family, for all the information we’re given before that moment.
Send-Off
This isn’t a diatribe against the episode, far from it: there’s a lot more to like about the show than simply its bare-bones plotting, and this was still a pretty fun episode notwithstanding (the song and the parade were just two of the highlights). It just seems like a wasted opportunity to more fully tackle the bullying issue instead of following an old stereotype that doesn’t help as much. Some of my points are weaker than others, I freely admit it, but hopefully you can see where I'm coming from, and given my interest in how My Little Pony would tackle the problem of bullying, I've explained why I felt this episode wasn't quite as all-around good as I had hoped given that premise.
Until next time, Impossible Numbers out.
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Good essay.
I agree with your assessment of how poorly the show portrays the lessons they are trying to impart. But I'm used to that from these writers.
As for your 2 major points:
1: Bullying behavior: while there is no evidence that bullies do their thing because they are insecure, there are 2 defintely observable behaviors that are similar.
Power without confidence. Many who have some form of power, but are insecure, will seek to achieve self affirmation through exercising their power actively. People who are strong will fight, people who are smart will scheeme, people who are rich will spend. People who are fearsome will terrorize.
2: Exposure conditioning: people who are exposed to violence as children will be more likely to have violent tendencies as adults. Children who are exposed to hightened sexuality as children will be more likely to sexualize children. People who are exposed to fear or anger will be more likely to adapt those attributes into their psyches.
As for these 2, behaviors, the first is what I attribute to DT and SS. Their power is social status, and to keep it, they must clearly push others down.
The 2nd could have been attributed to Babs, but for the biggest mistake the episode makes.
Making the bullying about "blank flanks".
The original moral from "Call of the Cutie" was a strong and valuable one, showing that differences can be strengths and that you are never alone.
Unfortunately, due to this dynamic, the believability of the scenario falls apart. If the bullying was undefined and character based, rather than bigoted, it would make sense. This type of scenario would work with a trait like sexuality which the bullying convert could be in denial about and hide from their peers, but not with a cutie mark.
The one thing that this episode truly pisses me off about is the same thing Call of the Cutie did. The total lack of investment of the adults in the foals' problems. the lesson of "snitching is OK if someone is doing something wrong" is totally overshadowed by the fact that AJ seems to have knowledge of Babs' past as a victim of bullying and how that has affected her emotionally, yet her own sister has been teased and picked on by the same 2 bullies for at least a year, and has vocally complained abou it, yet AJ is either too oblivious to realize or has a very skewed opinion of what is accceptable social behavior for kids.
Thank you! I'm glad someone brought this to light. I think the "insecure bully" this is one of the reasons I didn't much care for this episode apart from the (admittedly catchy as hell) song. It just doesn't ring true to me as someone who was the victim of bullies in his childhood and given the same bad advice that this episode offered.
If it is for DT, it would come from her mother, not her father. What we've seen from him is that he's a pretty nice guy. Though, personally, my theory on DT remains that her mother is not part of her life at all, that Rich raises her alone and doesn't spend much time with her. To make up for that, buys things, and so lack of a good role model + money = entitled bully.
Overall, a pretty weak threat anyway. Babs was leaving town.
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It isn't though. Of the four episodes DT has been in prior to this one, only in one was it about blank flanks. The only other case where they are outright bullying it is about Granny Smith. Then you've got Cutie Pox, where DT isn't bullying and her only lines are her (correctly) pointing out that something isn't right with AB's mark. And that leaves Ponyville Confidential, in which DT blackmails the CMC with doing to them what they've done to others to keep them writing stories (and something they should themselves have published as part of their apology).
For DT and Spoon, there's two possibilities. The first is that they go for anyone with weakness. The other is that they (or at least DT) has a personal grudge against AB (and therefore her friends) and they primarily bully the CMC for that reason. Worth noting that we've never seen the duo bully anyone other than the CMC. I'm not saying that they don't, just that there's nothing that says they do. And if they do so, how much they focus on others as opposed to the one vulnerable group.
For the former, Babs covers up the weakness. For the latter, she removes her association with AB and co and becomes an ally against them. Plus DT and Spoon strike me as the type who would rather be in a sophisticated city like Manehatten than a rustic little town like Ponyville, so there's a natural inclination to want to befriend her, sort of like how Rarity jumped on Twi the moment she learned Twi was from Canterlot.
Well, the obvious reason why that is so is so that DT and Spoon can continue to function as recurring antagonists. The same reason the CMC can pull a stunt that could have potentially killed someone and not get punished. Or why a pair of foals can run off into the woods and bring back a huge bear and get rewarded with mustaches. The needs of the show
That said, in quasi-defense (after all, they are bullies and spoiled brats) of the dynamic duo: DT and Silver Spoon are primarily verbal bullies, out to cause emotional harm, and not necessarily the most threatening at that.
They prey on weakness but tend to back down against shows of strength. The blank flank thing was only for the one episode (until brought back here with a new character, and then only to test the waters). The Granny Smith deal, one episode. They smell blood, they go for it. Punch them in the nose, they back off. (They're like totally sharks right now.) But the rest of the time? We don't know how things are. The CMC and they most likely run in different circles, other than at school. And if they don't have something to target (or get the lackluster writing they had in this episode), maybe the best they can do is "lame-kin" most of the time. Assuming Cheerilee isn't usually as incompetent at her job as she was in Ponyville Confidential (of course, she had to be, or no episode), even at school the bully factor is limited.
In this episode, it was Babs that took the bullying to a higher level. She was at the head of the pack. She was the one that instigated physical things. She bullied even when the other two weren't around, leaving AB no safe haven. That says something about the nature of the bullying she received in Manehatten, but the fact that we haven't seen that sort of behavior from the duo also says a bit about life in Ponyville. It normally isn't near this bad.
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I agree with your assessment of how poorly the show portrays the lessons they are trying to impart. But I'm used to that from these writers.
I think part of that can be traced back to their increasing focus on making a funny or dramatic scenario than in working out any logical problems that emerge as a result. The staff behind The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 were clearly more interested in getting to the contest than in making any moral, for instance.
Plus, it depends on the writer.
Power without confidence.
I'm not sure I get this one. Sure, you could argue they're insecure about their position, but not necessarily their character. That's more "do unto others before they do unto you" rather than "do unto others because you secretly believe you're worthless", the latter being what the myth is about.
Exposure conditioning: people who are exposed to violence as children will be more likely to have violent tendencies as adults.
Making the bullying about "blank flanks".
If the bullying was undefined and character based, rather than bigoted, it would make sense. This type of scenario would work with a trait like sexuality which the bullying convert could be in denial about and hide from their peers, but not with a cutie mark.
Spot on. That was one of the biggest problems I had with that scene, too. That, and the fact that Babs' character did a U-turn at the same time.
The one thing that this episode truly pisses me off about is the same thing Call of the Cutie did. The total lack of investment of the adults in the foals' problems. the lesson of "snitching is OK if someone is doing something wrong" is totally overshadowed by the fact that AJ seems to have knowledge of Babs' past as a victim of bullying and how that has affected her emotionally, yet her own sister has been teased and picked on by the same 2 bullies for at least a year, and has vocally complained abou it, yet AJ is either too oblivious to realize or has a very skewed opinion of what is accceptable social behavior for kids.
Actually, this is starting to sound weirder the more I think about it. Cheerilee seems to overlook some of it, too, such as in Family Appreciation Day when DT called Granny Smith a kooky old lady and only got punished by her father later, yet this same teacher comes down hard on Apple Bloom for passing a note in class...
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I have to admit I quite liked the song. Not my favourite, admittedly (I'm still waiting for someone to top the Flim Flam bros.), but hey, it's catchy!
Yeah, that's how I felt about it, too. Goodness me, but I was hoping the show would do something completely different.
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Well, there's more to a family than just the parents, and I'm not entirely convinced Filthy is blameless. The times we see him, he's certainly more pleasant and principled than Diamond Tiara, but on the other hand, one wonders what kind of mindset would be needed to monopolize the town's retail market.
Also, the debut of Diamond Tiara had her pretty much pick on Apple Bloom solely for her blank flank (i.e. "not being special"). They don't pick on anyone else onscreen because the rest of the class already have their cutie marks. In any case, they were pretty clear about their intentions in this most recent episode.
I also don't feel convinced by the idea that Babs' bullying is a reflection of her time in Manehattan. If we're going down that avenue, then wouldn't it make more sense for Babs not to react so excessively? If bullies are worse in Manehattan, then a couple of lesser bullies from a hick town would be all in a day's work.
It seems more likely that Babs is simply more unpleasant than the writer realizes. She sure did look like she was enjoying it too much when she told off Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, even if they deserved some reprimanding.
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No doubt Filthy does have his ruthless business side, though the closest we get to seeing anything like that is his disapproving looks when people call him Filthy. I figure he might be sort of like Costco, in that he takes care of his own, but you don't cross him. I do feel that part of DT's personality comes from her drive to succeed, to impress daddy. Hence why she goes so determined in Ponyville Confidential.
Just too bad that Cheerilee completely failed to do her job in that episode and then used DT as a scapegoat. If Cheerilee had paid attention and nurtured DT in that role, DT would probably have had a good and successful run as editor. Of course, then we wouldn't have had our episode, and so Cheerilee had to be incompetent and DT take all the blame
And, yes, DT picks on AB about her (and Twist's) blank flank. That however is what she picks on, not why. DT herself was a blank flank just prior to Call of the Cutie, making her most likely the third to last person in her class to get a cutie mark, with Twist and AB being the only other two without a cutie mark. Prior to Sweetie and Scoots joining the class anyway. Even with them figured in (which would mean 20+ foals at their class level), it still puts DT in the last 25% of her class. Yet I doubt Spoon picked on Diamond Tiara for that reason or that DT would have put up with anyone else picking on her. And, likewise, once Babs became "cool" in the eyes of DT and Spoon, her blank flank wasn't an issue to them.
If you go with the typical TV/movie school, I tend to view DT and Spoon as the leaders of the in crowd while the CMC are the outsiders, the not so popular kids. And not in a class where everyone gets along great, but one where that in crowd does get their jollies at the expense of the outsiders. The embarrass you so they can all laugh at you type, as opposed to the more physical bully who also beats you up after school and takes your lunch money. More Cordelia (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) than Biff (Back to the Future).
Not necessarily. You've got Babs, who is pretty traumatized about being bullied, to the point that her family sends her out of town. You drop her in a new town, to visit a cousin she's never met, who instantly swarms her with a couple of friends, all focused on her blank flank, the thing Babs least wants attention on. Then a couple of bullies show up and start in on her. At that point, she makes a snap decision to join them. There's no thought to evaluating that these might be lesser bullies (or even the only ones in town), if she's even aware that not all bullies are equal. It is about to start again and that must be avoided.
And once she is in, she pretty much takes charge.*
Yeah, I think she definitely has a bit of that big city sass, as DT refers to it.*
*Though really, this is most likely for show reasons, as opposed to some intended character building. Babs needs to be the focus of the episode, so she's put in the front of the bully pack. DT and Spoon will receive their comeuppance, and to bring Babs around full circle, it is most likely to come from her. Same reason we almost exclusively see the bad sides of DT and Spoon. It is all for our 22 minutes of amusement.
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Just another fun, funny, and aesthetically pleasing episode with moral!fail.
Just like Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000, The Mysterious Mare Do Well, Feeling Pinkie Keen, etc. All amazing episodes that make you facepalm at the poorly delivered moral.
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I was thinking more of his talk on price-slashing and becoming the cornerstone of the retail sector in town, which is pretty much monopolizing the local market. In any case, my reason for bringing up family was that, before Babs threatened to tell their mothers, there was no indication the threat would work.
I'm guessing Namby-Pamby was pretty reliable on her own before then, but that said, Cheerilee's leaving them to their own devices was transparently done for plot purposes, or she would have had Diamond Tiara out the door the moment they published the first lot of Ponyville stories. Then again, this is a society in which kids can go wherever they like without supervision: to Manehattan and back; all around town; while diving in the lake; to Zecora's hut...
Admittedly, Diamond Tiara's and Silver Spoon's view is that blank flanks are "not special" (which is as close a reason as we get for their picking on Apple Bloom in canon) and therefore bad for that reason, but this is a banal point about discriminatory bullying in general, not a saving throw. The point about the blank flank is not that having a blank flank at all gets you branded, or that leads to the absurdity that newborns are teased for having nothing on their croups. The point is that latecomers are past a certain age, akin to behaving like a child long after everyone else has "grown up". I don't know if Diamond Tiara got hers just in time or not, but even if Diamond Tiara is one of the latecomers, that neither implies she liked being blank nor that she was considered "late" by others. In any case, her rationale is that "being a blank flank means not being special", not that "not being special means being a blank flank".
Getting back to Babs; the moment when they start to pick on her, it's for her blank flank status. Their decision to accept her doesn't make a lot of sense given both their past behaviour towards the CMC, their stated blank flank prejudice, and their behaviour during that scene. It's possible that they liked having her around simply for the fun of watching her bully the CMC, and that they view her in the same way Silver Spoon might have viewed Diamond Tiara prior to her getting her cutie mark, but for the former, there's still the gaping public contradiction in their actions and an issue with their giving her too much status within the clique, and for the latter, the necessary information is missing.
This does make a lot of assumptions, though, about their dynamics. For one thing, DT and SS don't seem to be especially popular in any of their appearances, and both were outright deviant from the crowd in Call of the Cutie, The Cutie Pox, Family Appreciation Day and Ponyville Confidential (the latter two mostly Diamond Tiara). Call of the Cutie in particular saw a reversal of Apple Bloom's position among the other kids, and the clique for Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon doesn't seem to have any other members. About the only time I recall seeing kids bully as a crowd was in Fluttershy's flashbacks, and those kids have long since grown up.
This probably is what the staff are going for, and the part about the CMC being slightly insensitive does set it up. My issue with it, though, is that bully victims in real life don't pent up their frustrations until they suddenly snap and turn bully themselves, but become resigned to their fates in a phenomenon known as Learned Helplessness. Even if Babs was "traumatized" (the intensity of the word raises some eyebrows given what real trauma can be like) and self-conscious, it still makes more sense for her to hide in a crowd of like-minded victims for protection, and to avoid the bullies whenever possible, which is what the CMC tried to do. Joining the bullies not only never happens in real life, it exposes one to the very people you least want to meet and forfeits one's advantage in numbers.
As DPV111 points out, real life reaction-formation is done by people who hate something about themselves that they can reasonably hide, which is why you get homophobes but not Ginger-phobes. Allowing for self-hatred, for oneself and for one's group, doesn't provide an escape either. Even if, say, members of ethnic minorities hated themselves and their fellows, they're not very likely to seek acceptance from, much less get it from, other groups. Even the closest real life case -- the bystander effect -- doesn't predict that a victim of bullies will become the head bully for protection, but will simply become their cheerleader at most.
That is one way to put a positive spin on it, but to be frank, she ticks quite a few boxes for sadism: enjoying the suffering of others and having power over them; actively hunting them down rather than just taking advantage of chance encounters; intimidation; outright calculating how best to stick it to them (the parade scene); enjoying their humiliation; and showing none of the signs of moralistic anger that would be expected if she were undergoing a reaction-formation form of denial, as with homophobes. It's like two different characters were recruited for Babs: the quieter one for the beginning and the end, and the sadistic one for the middle.
My most generous interpretation is that the writing staff didn't realize this, and had different priorities for different scenes, with unforeseen consequences. It certainly doesn't help that she seems to get off scot free for essentially giving the CMC hell for several days.
This is true. My complaint isn't that Babs was at the forefront, but that she could have been made so without introducing such an unhelpful context for it. Plus, DPV11 sums it up pretty neatly here: 552685.
Yeah, that was pretty much a Walmart reference. As to Bab's threat, we've never seen the mother for either, though I guess we were meant to assume that, in the time Babs spent with Spoon and DT, she met their moms. Given that Babs was about to leave town, the threat was pretty laughable.
She shouldn't have had DT out the door. She should have properly supervised and nurtured her. Or, if she had shoved her out the door, she'd have kicked out the rest of those responsible as well, those being the CMC and Featherweight. And she definitely shouldn't have promoted the latter. But plot and karma reasons.
Oh, I'm not saying it was the most likely outcome. Just that Babs's bullying issues were so bad her parents sent her away, and she was probably hoping for some nice quiet time, without a focus on her flank. And instead she got hooked up with the most cutie mark obsessed ponies in all of Equestria. Not the best choice of places to send her to. And really dumb of AJ not to mention to AB that Babs would be a bit sensitive about the blank flank issue the moment AB got all excited about it.
Worth noting that Babs was in a brand new town, where she knew nobody her own age. Probably doesn't know AJ, Big Mac, or even Granny Smith that well, since she'd never met AB. Even without bullying, trying to adjust to a different social dynamic is trying. You adjust to try to fit in.
There's been a few comments related to the episode from people saying they did the same sort of thing Babs did. Might not be common, but apparently it does happen. I'm willing to bet most didn't take it as far as Babs did, however. And then there's the question if those kids were in Babs's situation (heavily bullied), or if they were just kids in the middle trying to avoid becoming the bullied. The latter is more likely. *shrug*
Cutie marks mean a lot to ponies. A blank flank is an easy thing to go for, much like trying fat comments on an overweight kid, clothing related ones on a poor one, or family related ones about the kid whose parents are embarrassing. There is a bias against such things, as part of the entitled aspect is feeling superior to others. They aren't necessarily deal breakers however, though those with said undesired traits would more likely be hanger-ons in the pack, not alphas. The reaction matters more. With AB, it got the desired reaction. With Babs, it got a different one.
DT and Spoon liked what they saw, either because they actually liked her or because they were essentially playing along for added misery for all the blank flanks. I'm inclined to go with the former, based on the ending train station scene, that they thought they had another kindred spirit.
It does, yes, but then, we don't see much of them in the episodes, so anything other than "they are spoiled rich kids who pick on the CMC" takes a lot of assumptions. They are plot devices more so than characters.
A larger clique is not needed for plot reasons and would add development costs (extra pony to animate, possible extra voice actor). While we don't see them being "popular," we also don't see the opposite. DT gets a Hearts and Hooves Day card from Alula, for example, and there's lots of ponies at her party. The shown size of Cheerilee's class various between 8 to 12 ponies, depending on the episode. 2 entitled kids, 3 CMC. It really doesn't leave much room, especially given the other ponies in the class (Twist, Snails, Snips, Truffle Shuffle, none of whom would be "cool kids").
There isn't much emphasis on school dynamics in the show and the class size is too small to really dive into it anyway. Even if you figure in another class, that being where Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were in before and during Call of the Cutie, that still only makes for 20-24 ponies in that age bracket, assuming said class is the same size as Cheerilee's.
I agree as to Babs's personality. If she had gotten her cutie mark earlier, it seems like she would have been part of the problem for some other poor Manehatten foal. It was one area I felt the episode lacked a bit. When Babs was walking off with DT and Spoon after destroying the float, for example, I was expecting a bit of a remorseful over the shoulder look. Didn't get it. All we got was her covering her flank with the tail, but never a sign of remorse.
As to getting off scot-free, 22 minutes cartoon for kids. To get punished, you have to actively be a jerk, no remorse, no regrets. If you aren't a jerk, you can steal, abuse potions, and plot to put your cousin in a potentially life threatening situation and not get punished. And if you are a jerk, even if you aren't punished directly due to your actions, karma gets you (DT in Family Appreciation Day). Ending every CMC episode with them getting grounded probably wouldn't be too popular with the main target demographic ;) And, of course, you want kids to come clean, not keep hiding things for fear of punishment, so you stress the good ending part. The exception to that is H&H's Day, where the CMC wound up with extra chores, in part to set up a joke. The grounding and other punishments are just one of those things you have to assume typically happens off camera.
I think the writer's hands were tied in a lot of ways. 22 minutes, including credits and opening theme, isn't much time. The main target audience is young. The show needs to entertain (and sell toys) first and foremost, so it couldn't take a sudden turn to the dramatic. It needed a happy ending, so there was going to be redemption. It couldn't be for DT and Spoon, not without essentially killing their characters. The new character would also have to make the audience sympathetic, so the bullied background. And a good chunk of the episode would be spent on existing characters, not a new one, so limits on how much you could develop the new character.
And so we get a story where telling the parental figures did nothing (other than send Babs to Ponyville) and the ultimate redemption came about because Babs gained some self confidence and stood up for herself (and then bullied some bullies), with a message of "tell your parents."
Anyway, I don't disagree with your post's points about the nature of most bullies. Just like playing with some of the fine points as to potential motivations and underlying thoughts of the episode's characters
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I agree with this. The opening does show Babs having difficulty adjusting and feeling awkward when the CMC go on about it. The notion that this could influence her behaviour during the conversion scene, though, does not mean that it makes the scene believable, or that the way it was presented made sense. Give or take the qualifications of their specialized job, writers are just as fallible as anybody else.
I have yet to see those comments. In any case, I'd be wary about taking blog comments at face value not because I think they're lying, but because there can be unreported details which don't make the comparison feasible, some of which you've identified. I will admit, however, that "never" was putting it a bit strongly, so I'll retract that particular claim.
Well, that does hit into one of my points above about how DT and SS would have accepted her and how. The problem is that Babs sometimes cornered the CMC even without her little cheering squad around, and it's implied several times that Babs effectively took over as chief bully. This is what I mean by inconsistency: one explanation covers some of the scenes, but not others, and I think it's because the writers were trying for different things at different times.
As for the duo following her to the station to see her off, since they quickly go into making nasty comments, it seems more likely they were hoping for one last bit of entertainment. If they ever showed concern for her wellbeing (akin to Spoon looking concerned for Tiara during Call of the Cutie), then I don't recall the scene that showed it.
Well, not necessarily: some of the stuff we've pointed out could be seen by anybody who watches the episodes, and we do get glimpses in episodes like Ponyville Confidential and Family Appreciation Day.
I agree with the plot devices part, though, even if I think it's a bit of wasted potential for the character-building the show is well-known for.
The staff budget is a limiting factor, true. That said, they're perfectly willing to introduce new characters every other episode, and it's not like the other, regular background characters couldn't be recruited occasionally. Granted, DT and SS do their jobs as antagonists well, but the trade-off is that they come across as flat and repetitive.
This is true. It's not that I'm saying it's bad that they don't pick a particular trade-off, but I'm thinking, given the subject of the episode, that there was a missed opportunity here.
Granted, the show has done worse when it comes to dishing out karma (Boast Busters comes to mind), but on the other hand there have been times where characters have been punished (sometimes excessively) for their behaviour, most notably Ponyville Confidential, so it's not like it's impossible. I do agree, though, that the show's demographic creates a demand for other outcomes, so this is mitigated somewhat.
It probably is unfair of me to judge, from the luxury of a blog post, how writers running up to a deadline should do their work.
That doesn't mean I have to like the result, but I'll at least acknowledge these confounding factors.
Well, that's what fans are for, so why not?