Bullies. Or: Why Babs Seed gets no sympathy from me. · 11:37pm Apr 13th, 2013
Why does everypony hate Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara so badly?
That question came up recently when discussing my latest (clop)fic, Special Talents (NOT foalcon, as you probably already know if you're reading this!) After all - we've got Gilda, Blueblood, Trixie - so many other characters on this show who are portrayed as horribly nasty people, if not bullies in their own right, and they get not just fan appeal, but one redemption fic after another!
So... what is it that makes Di and Silvy different, especially since they're just children, and should therefore be given a little more slack?
First, let's look at what makes most of the "villains" on the show "better" than the Terrible Two. Blueblood, Photo Finish, Jet Set, and other ponies who are stuck up, snobbish pricks are... well, stuck up, snobbish pricks, not bullies. The other three bullies in the show, Trixie, Gilda, and Discord, all have something to make it not quite so bad.
Mostly.
Trixie is a showmare. When she's being a "bully," she's either taking down hecklers and entertaining everypony who isn't being humiliated on-stage, or she's under the magical influence of the Alicorn Amulet. So it's not so hard to see beyond her nastiness and look into why she's nasty instead, which opens up the path to redemption of some sort.
Discord... well, he's a bully, but he's a clown of a bully, not a mean one. He's not walking around, telling ponies that they're worthless. He's walking around, and giving you a mustache because it's fun. Again, he's entertaining - and, of course, he's the villain of the episode. We later see him redeemed in canon, which shows how easy it is to forgive him for prior bad behavior when it's all pretty well fixed afterwards.
The fact he's voiced by Jon deLancie helps too, of course. I have mild hopes that, one day, Patrick Stewart will voice a nemesis for Discord....
And, as for Gilda... well, she's the one who shows up as a villain the most often, doesn't she? She's also the only one of them who, like Di and Silver Spoon, is a bully simply for the sake of being a bully from what we see. On top of that... she's a predator, in a world of prey. One kind of expects she's going to be mean, and given the fact that griffons, in mythology, love to eat horses... Hell, Ponyville's lucky she didn't just grab somepony for dinner!
But there are two things that make Di and Silvy worse than all the others. First, there's the fact that they're recurring bullies. Trixie shows up once, and the second time she's only evil because of magic. Gilda shows up once, and given that Pinkie's annoying her, who can say she's really that nasty all the time? She might just be mean because she was having a really, really bad stretch going on, and Pinkie started her bad attitude rolling downhill by trying to butt in with Rainbow.
By contrast, Di and Silvy show, repeatedly, that they're bullies without provocation, especially Diamond Tiara. Of the two, Silvy's generally the one I've seen get better treatment most of the time, and I think that's because in the show, we'll see that she's not the ringleader - she's the follower. She also breaks away from Di once in a while, like we see in Family Appreciation Day.
There's something even more important though. I think what really makes Silver Spoon and, especially, Diamond Tiara unforgivable to so many people is that... they're children.
Gilda, Trixie, Blueblood - no matter how much you dislike them, they're caricatures. They're adults exhibiting (mostly) childish levels of exaggerated behavior, and that provides a little disconnect for most bronies. But Diamond Tiara is a child bully - she's that much closer to the people so many of us had to deal with when we were kids. Sure, she might grow up and be decent. Sure, she might suddenly have a life-changing epiphany and become a good pony. But until we see that happen, she's the perfect stand-in for the ponies we had all those wonderfully horrifying fantasies about when we were younger, and... well, at least this way, nopony real gets hurt when we indulge that shadenfreude-fueled side of us that wants to see the bully taken down several pegs.
You may be wondering what any of this has to do with Babs, and why I dislike her (and her episode) so strongly. Here's the thing - like a lot of us, I imagine, I was bullied when I was younger. A lot. I even got the lecture, multiple times, about how "it takes two to fight" and so it was equally my fault that I was being treated like a human punching bag. I think my favorite was when one of the teachers, trying to help stop the bullying, pulled one of the more active jackasses aside along with me so we could talk things out. My list of problems? The beatings, the taunting, the constant feeling that I couldn't go outside without having to hide. His list of problems?
I used big words. Because, y'know, in the third grade you're not supposed to be able to use the word vocabulary, apparently.
The best part? The teacher treated these as being equally responsible for the bad blood, and said that I'd have to stop using my full command of the English language, and he'd have to stop beating me up. I had some particularly choice examples of my mastery of the English language I wanted to use at that point, but I didn't. 
I've since managed to outlast the bastards, and after I learned that it didn't count as "fighting" if they tried to kick you in the face and you grabbed their foot, put it on your shoulder, and walked away, they stopped trying to do all of that too. There was still the general ostracization, and the attempts to get at me by picking on my much more reactive (and autistic) younger brother, but eventually we both got out of the Hell that was the Modern School System and moved on.
I've heard a lot of other people talk about their own troubles with bullies since then, particularly those who never were able to grow quite as thick as skin as I did and who came closer to doing something drastic. And I've sympathized a lot with them, except for the ones who ended up doing the one thing that I... can't say that I forgive, but I have to say I can understand.
The ones who turned around and became bullies themselves in order to deal with it. And this is what I hate, hate, HATE One Bad Apple for. I don't mean the ones who retaliated against their bullies - that's not becoming a bully! That's a desperate attempt to try and make it stop, by making the person who's making your life a living Hell know what it feels like. It's often degraded as being revenge, but a lot of the time, there's a part of the victim that can't accept that they're being made to suffer like this knowingly.
"Surely," that tiny part says, "if they knew what it was like, they'd stop!"
Well, it usually doesn't work, but that's the motivation. What really gets me though, is when somebody who does know what it feels like... decides to pass it on to somebody else. It's the lowest form of bullying, because you should damn well know better. The CMC's didn't become bullies in the One Bad Seed episode - Babs did, and that is damned, damned hard to forgive. It's even harder to forgive when you realize that Babs just had to put up with it for one week, and those bullies would be out of her life forever! Sure, it meant that Ponyville wasn't as safe from bullying as she'd thought it was, but what did she do instead? She didn't even just play along with Di and Silvy while they were around, she went out of her way to make the CMC's lives, especially Apple Bloom's, miserable.
She became the exact thing she probably had to deal with back home, and for no good reason. If they'd wanted to explore the same idea, she could've helped the CMC's start bullying Di and Silvy back, but they didn't go that direction.
So, honestly, I can see why folks have so much trouble with Silvy and Di. But Babs is the pony I really, really can't stand the idea of having to deal with.
You make some interesting points, and I agree with some of them, but I hope you won't mind a rebuttal on the ones that really stand out to me:
Seems to me that the only difference in Discord's bullying is in his style of expression – he essentially bullies everyone, because no one else has the power to stop him. Like every bully, he understands that his actions are selfishly-directed and inherently painful for others to experience. The fact of his immortality and consequent tremendous knowledge and experience makes him – in my opinion, of course – one of the biggest offenders: he should not only know better, there is no benefit to his actions as a supreme immortal being than in his enjoyment of the suffering of others. How is he not 'mean' when nothing he does is beneficial except to hopefully cause people to grow a thicker skin unless he kills them in the process? He causes the suffering of others for his own gain, well aware that he's doing so, and only stops when he meets with a greater, more benevolent power. He is a bully with an extended self-defense monologue
I initially felt the same as you did regarding Babs, and I still don't care for her as a character (which might simply be my own personal bias). I felt that the forgiveness was too quick and her turn-around also too unrealistically quick. But regardless, she did experience a change at the end of the episode that showed she was aware of her mistake, apologized, and accepted the forgiveness and apologies of the people she'd wronged – all huge steps for anyone who has been a bully. Without that acceptance, they simply continue being what they are until they do have a life-changing experience that might never come. So, my dislike of Babs' personality not-withstanding, she redeemed herself in the end. Definitely not my favorite episode, but at least the lesson portrayed is a decent one.
FWIW, I was terribly bullied for many months at 12 years old by a nasty little kid and his toady accomplice who was very much like Silver Spoon in his actions. Fortunately the school administration took a different and more severe view than you experienced after I snapped and started wailing on the other kid during one class (we were all suspended, him for much longer, and we were separated into different classes after that). Years later at 19, I had no hate in me for him, yet I passed him while riding my bike one day; we recognized each other in passing and he spat at me. I just kept riding – I had a job to get to and had no desire at all to bother with him. Many years later, I still have no problem forgiving him, which is how it should be. Hopefully he's made a better life for himself since then.
1005753
Agreed, and glad to hear you were able to move on.
As for Discord... I think the other issue is that, while you're right, he's also slave to another factor.
He's chaos incarnate. In a way, getting mad at Discord for what he does is... well, it would be kind of like getting mad at Opal for taunting and then eating a mouse. It's his nature in much the same way - you might be mad about the obvious glee he takes in doing it, and you certainly want to take steps to control him, but there's only so much that can be done in that direction.
And I'll admit, Babs earned back a lot of my affections at the family reunion. I just still *really* hate the way that episode tries to make the CMC's out as having become the bad guys at the end.
1005941
True, which is why he had to be held at bay as a stone statue...
Well at least until he met with the unstoppable force of Fluttershy's friendship, apparently. Sigh.
1005963
Dude, c'mon, don't hold it against him.
He's an immortal being of raw, elemental chaos.
And he's up against this raw, elemental force.
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw2805-132889629302.jpg
It's like expecting a fly to win in a battle with a Buick.
Though, seriously, I *do* personally tend to mentally retcon that episode less into "Fluttershy's friendship made him good" and more into "seriously, what sort of elemental spirit of chaos am I if I willingly throw away the first truly novel experience I've had in well over a thousand years? I've gotta see where this rabbit hole goes!"
1006087 You make a strong argument! I personally could not stand against the raw elemental force of Fluttershy D'AWWWW!
I mean come on! He really didn't stand a chance, did he?
1005947
The whole 'we became bullies ourselves' bit did rub me the wrong way too, so I get that part of your ire. Personally I had no problem with the episode as a whole, but my mom, who I introduced to the show a while back, had a similar reaction to the forgiveness and redemption.
While I agree that you make a lot of good points... I can't help but feel like you're being an enabler.
I have read stories with Silver being literally beaten to death by Diamond just because. Or Diamond being sexually assaulted into complete tortured horror, and Silver (in another place) becoming a punching bag for effed-in-the-head Rarity. Does this seem normal or even sensible?
I enjoy making references. As best as I can, this is one of my favorite responses to folks that write grimdark that feels like a desperate, wrist-cutting cry-more emo tale attacking their childhood tormentors. From Jonathan Lethem's "The Dystopianist, thinking of his rival, is interrupted by a knock at the door" from the anthology "Men and Cartoons." "How many sheep have to die to assuage your childish insecurities?" I hope I got it right.
That's the bottom of it. You're adults now. See a shrink, drink your pills and learn how to relate to the world without becoming the douche that made Saw or Hostel.
1015372
You give Eli Roth far too much credit, sir.
And it's true that some folks go WAY overboard. I don't think Di would intentionally harm Silvy like that, and agree that they don't *deserve* that sort of treatment. Which brings me to two points:
1: For some, I'm saying it's semi-therapeutic. Real therapy would be better, but better to exorcise the demons with fictional ponies than real people. More importantly, that part of my post was just explaining why I thought they were the fandom's primary real "villains."
2: Writing about X doesn't mean condoning it. The Woman is a brutal, brutal film about domestic abuse that is oftenncalled misogynistic. What people miss is that all the horrors are SUPPOSED to be disturbing! The movie is about those things BEING BAD, so no, it's not encouraging them.
Similarly, some of the fics about bad things happening to Di and Silvy use them specifically to address a point about them as the victims. For example, that Silvy doesn't really see herself as abused by Di, but as her friend. By having an adult (Rarity) do so much worse, it draws a starker contrast to the co-dependent, parasitic nature ofnthe bully/sycophant relationship.
1016302
Much of the time, I can somehow see when the authors give an explanation of what they are doing. Some of them even talk about being fans of the characters they abuse (HamGravy being one of them) and I think I can see it. I love my Bad Apple character, and I beat the living crap out of him a few times. But there was a story reason, and the batterers were bad guys. In the other case the batterers are presented as neutral or with an attempted whitewash.
I think what scares me most are the commenters. They lay out comments that amount to "Molest the fillies more" or "Have (X) character slay more main characters that others love." So I guess I'm really more agains the ones that could use genuine therapy that go around drooling over death.
that is so true. it good to hear that someone with this opionin as me
I think everyone is a bully to some degree at some point to someone. What matters is that you can eventually realize you're hurting others who don't deserve to be hurt, stop doing it, and do your best to make amends.
1015372
I know this post is ancient and i`m being a topic necromancer but still i wanted to give my 2 cents on what you said:
See a shrink.
You knwo what they say:
Write a story about what you want to do to your tormentors, it will atleast give you relief and a bit of peace of heart so these emotions wont fester.
1404428
Actually, evidence suggests the contrary, that the idea of catharsis is more harmful than helpful, as it encourages further maladaptive thoughts by normalizing the negativity. But letthat pass.
I'm not sure for what reason you are suggesting therapy, probably not the actual reason (panic attacks and OCD.)
1005941
I missed this earlier, but I feel the need to comment.
The difference between Discord and Opal is Opal is sentient but Discord is sapient, and should be acquainted with the concept of telos, intent. He understands the consequences of his acts but doesn't care, the definition of sociopathy. Or if you're arguing that might makes right just rename him Yahweh or Kefka, establish a faith and call it a day.
1404696
No panic attacks and OCD
Think more like a lacking emotional output-system, a minor Inferiority complex and defensive agression caused by bullying
1404856
I don't have the macro. So: In Pinchy we trust. One WAT?
I don't know what you're saying. Are you accusing me or some character of something that hasn't been seen. I don't recall any stridency.
1406799
No, i dont accuse you of anything.
I was referring to more aspects of what bullying can induce in a victem and which are also pretty common.
Sorry for the confusion
For a pretty decent example:
See Twilight Sparkle
1406802
For some victims, yes. I was bullied extensively in elementary school, about the same age as the CMC and the rich girls. I was fat, wore glasses and was in the gifted program. It got to fistfight level a few times.
But guess what? I still managed to get a few friends, not as allies but just as friends, because the bullying was separate from social things. And in later school, everyone was actually mature. I even managed to get mroe freinds despire being (in high school) a furry, bisexual, a nerd, a perky goth and a pre-atheist. Bullying is not destiny. It's unpleasant. It should be stopped. But even the perpetrators do not deserve being evicerated.
1406830
Its good to hear that you could have recovered from that.
It could not have been easy to even try and open up to others again.
For me it were reasons i never learned. Guess i was just to different for their tastes. But i`ve managed to make those differences into my strengths so i`m not to worried about it.
1404706
His ability to actually control himself, ultimately, is up for debate. More importantly, so is his grasp on consequences beyond the immediate gratification of his boredom.
Like I said, I tend to think of him as being quite like Azathoth, blind idiot god of Chaos. He's an elemental force, and his capacity to moderate that force required being taught that, y'know, maybe he can actually *like* some of these interesting little squeaky things around him enough that he should have his fun by making them *happy* instead of just going for the short-term gratification.
1005947 Thank you for softening your Babs Seed opinions.
Outcome:
2 great fics showing the Babs Seed you can give sympathy to (and share sympathy with!):
Here's one.
Here's the other.
What does the writing in your avatar say?
2521470 What does the writing in your avatar?