Bradel Brainstorming – Character, Motivation and Conflict (3 of 3) · 8:12pm Jun 5th, 2013
We're talking about character and motivation. I've already put together a Part 1 (the core idea) and a Part 2 (examining the motivations of the Mane Six and Spike).
I think I promised you lot a Part 3 of 3. So let's kick things off with the CMC.[1][2]
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The Cutie Mark Crusaders
Apple Bloom: And where better to start than with Applejack Apple Bloom! Part of me hates to say it, but as much as I like Applejack, I think I probably like Apple Bloom better. She certainly has the most depth out of the show's cast of secondary characters—if she can even be considered a secondary character. I hate to tell you guys this, but by my count Apple Bloom headlines four episodes: one less than Spike, Rarity, and Applejack herself. And for both Applejack and Rarity, two of those five are split-billing episodes.
But that's not why you're here. You want to know what I have to say about Apple Bloom's motivation as a character. She, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle all share one big motivation: to get their cutie marks. The tricky thing is, they all want them for different reasons.
To Apple Bloom, her cutie mark represents her transition into adulthood. She's the kid around the farm, and so she has to deal with a completely different set of expectations from her siblings. They go and work in the fields every day. She has to go to school. Apple Bloom often comes off as the most mature of the CMC, and I suspect that's because maturity is her key conflict. And since Apple Bloom gets more episodes than the other two, this has been on display a lot throughout the series. "Bridle Gossip" (S1E09) has her trying to act grown up when her sister and her sister's friends all lose their wits. "Call of the Cutie" (S1E12) has her worrying about getting old without a cutie mark, among other things. And "Bad Seed" (S3E04) has Apple Bloom firmly rejecting the idea of telling the grown-ups about Babs' bullying, because she thinks the CMC ought to be able to handle their problems themselves. For her, a cutie mark is a form of graduation. Once she has it, she can be considered an adult, and that's all she really wants.
Scootaloo: Scootaloo, on the other hand, is looking for acceptance. She fawns over Rainbow Dash, which shouldn't be surprising since she's Rainbow Dash writ small. She plays a very Dash-like role in the CMC, trying to come off as the awesome one. She's very high on self-monitoring, just like Dash. I think for Scoots, getting her cutie mark would mean not being so much of an outsider anymore. And she is an outsider.
Much hay has been made of Scootaloo's apparent lack of family and inability to fly, and I think a lot of this resonates so well because of the near-desperation Scoots shows in trying to form an attachment to Rainbow Dash. She's naturally insecure in much the same way that Dash can be, and what she cares about most seems to be the way other ponies see her. As I mentioned last time, that's a part of Rainbow Dash's personality as well, though over the course of the series Dash has begun to move away from the excessive self-monitoring and focus more on actually developing relationships with her friends. Scootaloo is still dealing with these issues, and for me, I think getting her cutie mark represents achieving a kind of ground-level acceptance in Equestrian society. She wants it because it will make her less alone—and woe if she's the first or last of the CMC to get her cutie mark by a good margin.
ETA: Scramblers and Shadows has a different take on Scootaloo down in the comments that contrasts with mine and is worth checking out.
Sweetie Belle: Sweetie Belle is a bit harder to pin down I think. We only have one solid episode for her ("Sisterhooves Social" – S2E05), and it seems to indicate that what she really wants is Rarity's love. But as fun as this answer can be comedically (I love me some SweetieBot), I think it misses out on the real key to the episode. Sweetie Belle, more than anything else, wants to be useful. Her sister is fantastically useful, and Sweetie is stuck living in that shadow. She wants Rarity's love, yes, but since Rarity isn't a horrible pony, that's always going to be sort of a given. I think what she really wants, though, is Rarity's mentorship. Sweetie wants to know that there's something she's good at. That's why, when Rarity comes back and apologizes in "Sisterhooves Social", Sweetie refuses to take her back. Sweetie's conflict is entirely unresolved if she's not contributing to the relationship in terms of deciding on activities they do together. And, of course, trying to be useful is pretty much all Sweetie does in the first half of the episode: cooking breakfast (and being terrible at it), washing clothes (and being terrible at it), making art (and causing Rarity problems), cleaining the boutique (and causing Rarity problems). She feels useless, especially compared to her sister, but if she had a cutie mark, things would be different. This fits in with how the CMC keep trying new things to earn cutie marks, too. Whatever talents Sweetie has, they must not be worth much because (1) she doesn't have a cutie mark already and (2) nobody makes her feel useful when she uses them.
Diarchs and Discord and Lovers, Oh My!
Celestia: For all that she's a huge presence in the setting of Equestria and the fandom, we really don't get a whole lot of Celestia to work with. Her motivations are hazy at best, so let's take a step back and consider what we know about her emotions. When have we seen Celestia emotionally engaged in the events of the show?
In "Friendship is Magic Pt. 2" (S1E02), Celestia is moved to tears by the return of her sister. Also, we get the first evidence of Chessmaster Celestia, for anyone who's keeping score. Celestia doesn't really show any emotion in "Swarm of the Century" (S1E10), but it's worth pointing out that she traveled to Ponyville in person to tell Twilight she'd have to cancel the planned visit, rather than just sending a letter via Spike. Similarly, as much as "A Bird in the Hoof" (S1E22) may be the first solid marker for Trollestia, there's really not much emotion to be seen when Celestia finally gets around to completing that planned visit. We get more Chessmaster Celestia and Trollestia out of "The Best Night Ever" (S1E26), since Celestia explicitly admits to hoping Twilight and her friends would be able to make the Grand Galloping Gala less painfully boring—and that she's very happy that they did. "The Return of Harmony Pt. 1" (S2E01) gives us angry Celestia for the first time, after Discord steals the Elements of Harmony, but that's about it for interesting Celestia bits in the Season 2 opener. And there's really not much more Celestia characterization in Season 2, until the closer. "A Canterlot Wedding" (S2E25/26) gives us Celestia being disappointed in Twilight and Celestia being protective toward her subjects, but that's about it. "The Crystal Empire" (S3E01/02) doesn't give us a whole lot more, except that Celestia has a lot of faith in Twilight. Oh, and a useful bit of trivia—that she and Luna were responsible for overthrowing Sombra. And while she shows up a couple times through the third season, again we don't get much characterization except that she's proud of Twilight, which is largely from "Magical Mystery Cure" (S3E13).
So, can we read anything into Celestia's motivations from this? To me, a couple major points stand out. First, Celestia is committed to the preservation of Equestria. This shows in her reactions to both Discord and Chrysalis, and there's some interesting subtext in the fact that she and Luna overthrew Sombra a millenium before the show. It's a bit of an open question whether this was a defensive action or a crusade of ideals, though I think I'd tend to favor the latter, since Celestia and Luna's rise to power seems to be tied into overthrowing Discord's reign as well. My interpretation on canon is that Celestia is more committed to making her world a place of good than to any limited national or group interest, and it fits well with her role as less of a political ruler and more of an eternal force within the world. The second big motivation we can discern is her desire to see the ponies she rules succeed. Twilight is a major case study, but Celestia's actions with the Apple family ("Family Appreciation Day" – S2E12) and Fluttershy ("Keep Calm and Flutter On" – S3E10) show that this motivation isn't limited to her faithful student. She chooses to act as a force promoting self-actualization among her subjects, when she gets the chance—and Chessmaster Celestia really ties into this motivation. Finally, we have Celestia's rather mundane desire to escape boredom, the source of the Trollestia interpretation. It may not seem like a major motivation when stacked against the other two, but it does seem to play a fairly big role in her characterization and I don't think it should be overlooked. It also creates a bit of an interesting juxtaposition with Discord.
Luna: We don't have nearly as much information on Luna as we do on Celestia, and most of the good information stems from just two episodes: "Luna Eclipsed" (S2E04) and "Sleepless in Ponyville" (S3E06). And what we learn from those two episodes suggests that motivationally, Luna is a bit like a hybrid between Celestia and Rainbow Dash. Yes, Rainbow Dash.
The Celestia side is easy. Luna, just like her sister, is committed to the defense of Equestria or possibly its ideals (cf. "The Crystal Empire"), and she wants to try to help her subjects learn and grow (cf. "Sleepless in Ponyville"). I don't think these motivations are quite as strong with Luna, which is unsurprising given her millenial absence, but she definitely demonstrates both.
The other side is what we see in "Luna Eclipsed", and I picked out Rainbow Dash specifically because I think there's a strong parallel in the way they both seem to be trying their best to gain acceptance by filling a prescribed role in Equestrian society. Rainbow Dash wants to live up to the image of the daring adventurer. Luna just wants to live up to the image of who she is, an immortal princess and one of the two diarchs of Equestria. We're basically told that the whole Nightmare Moon incident stemmed from Luna's failure to feel accepted and appreciated by her subjects. She certainly behaves differently from Rainbow Dash on the surface, but the two share a strong commonality in how they flip between doing their best to live up to their role and interacting more naturally with the ponies they regard as friends.
Discord: On the one hand, I feel like this is a motivation blurb that's hardly worth doing. On the other hand, I feel like this one deserves a blog entry of its own—largely to dig into my own headcanon regarding Discord.
So I'll keep this relatively short. Discord is supposedly a spirit of chaos. We don't really know how he came to be that way, and I've seen some entertaining theories about his backstory (e.g. he's what became of Star Swirl the Bearded). But we know that he loves chaos and, after the events of "Keep Calm and Flutter On", that he appreciates friendship. That's not a lot to work with, but it puts me heavily in mind of Celestia's desire to avoid boredom. Discord is apparently immortal, and while I don't think boredom is a necessary byproduct of immortality, I think it's a very likely byproduct unless one finds a strong psychological coping mechanism. My personal headcanon runs to Discord being much older than Celestia and Luna, and probably not a spirit of chaos at all, but rather a being that has evolved into something that seems like a spirit of chaos through a desperate need to alleviate tremendous existential boredom. All Discord wants are new experiences and the capacity to be entertained.
Cadance and Shining Armor: I've mentioned to GhostOfHeraclitus my opinion that these two, as far as canon is concerned, are really one character. Not only are their stories apparently inseparable, but every time they appear in a story, they seem to serve almost identical roles in different places. First, they're both held prisoner by Chrysalis's power ("A Canterlot Wedding" – S2E25/26). Then they're both beaten down to near-uselessness trying to defend the Crystal Empire from the return of King Sombra ("The Crystal Empire" – S3E01/02), a situation which they resolve by... well... go read this. Then they're both tied up struggling to see that their new home can host the Equestria games ("Games Ponies Play" – S3E12). It's not like Batman and Bruce Wayne. They can both appear in the same scene together, and all. But they're basically one character.
While I like them, I don't think they've been given a whole lot of motivation. If I'm going to call them one character, I suppose I could say they're motivated by "self-preservation"—Shining Armor is committed to supporting Cadance, and Cadance is committed to supporting Shining Armor. But in their episodes so far, they've largely just served in plot-relevant roles. They haven't been asked to make a lot of choices or show a lot of depth. As far as I'm concerned, they're basically a blank page. For my part, I'd tend to work with them largely as sharing the same motivations Celestia and Luna hold in common, since they have a similar role in Equestrian society, and since Cadance's love spell seems to tie into the encouraging self-actualization motive.
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And I think I'm going to call it a day there. I debated including a few more characters like Trixie, Zecora, Big Macintosh, Cheerilee, and the Cakes, but I don't think there's really enough to dig into for those characters' motivations. Oh, sure, we can talk about their motivations, but we're going to hit speculative territory relatively fast, even for Trixie. As it is, both Discord and Cadance+Shining are pretty weak on the canon motivation front, but I wanted to do the whole set of royals and immortals. My feeling is that once you get off this list (and maybe even if you don't), writing anypony as a main character is as much an exercise in creating that character as it is in portraying that character (accepted fanon aside). That's fine. Three of my favorite stories on Fimfiction are OC stories, and one of my own is largely dedicated to an OC and some background ponies who might as well be OCs. But I think it's doing a disservice to the writer's task to overindulge in this sort of canon character analysis. Beyond a certain point, you should stop looking for clues and just start writing your characters the way you want them to be.
So that's about it for my short series on character and motivation. I hope you've enjoyed it. I don't know what the next thing on my blogging agenda will be (aside from returning to the Brandon Sanderson lectures, once I get more free time back), but if you stick around I'm sure something will come up.
[1] By point of warning, I'm probably not going to use as many episode citations this time around because the characters being discussed have a lot less total screen time and much of their characterization comes from just one or two episodes. For instance, almost all of canon Luna comes from "Luna Eclipsed". Only the CMC and Celestia really see a lot of general airplay, and even their appearances are fairly limited.
[2] Also, the CMC bit here is lifted almost verbatim from a comment I mentioned in Part 1 that I left on Skywriter's "Contraptionology". Not much new here. I largely stand by the analysis I did there, even if it was pretty much off-the-cuff.
Limits of canon be damned!
Let us portay them all as raving lunatics!
Let them all be perfectly okay with the complete destruction of Equestria!
Let them eat cake!
In all seriousness this is a great analysis with the little you had to work regarding each of these characters.
Will we get one about your personal head-canon?
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I think that you'll be able to find at least one fic on this site to answer each of your requests.
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You'd think I would, however surprisingly little cake eating goes on, and usually all of it by Pinkie and Celestia.
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Sadly, not anytime soon I don't think. I have three more weeks to go before the quarter wraps up for me here, and they look to be kind of ugly weeks. Plus, I really need to get the next chapter of "Bell, Book & Candle" done, revised, and published—so far it's sitting at about 40%.
Beyond that, I'd probably be willing to blog some head-canon if people were interested, though my head-canon is all a bit weird. There's the "how can I string together what I know about the characters into writable personas" headcanon, where I might take some small liberties to make, say, Celestia and Luna a little more interesting. The show offers almost no information on their relationship with each other, so that basically devolves to headcanon. But then there's the "how can I tweak the characters to make them more fun to write" headcanon, which is where my Lovecraftian Pinkie and Guile Hero Applejack come from. There's no real basis for that sort of stuff anywhere, but I just find it very enjoyable.
Gods, these have been some really excellent posts. Especially considering they were produced during academic crunch time.
That said, I'm gonna disagree on Scootaloo's evaluation. (Caveat: I'm doing this on memory, and some episodes I haven't seen for a while).
I think Scootaloo is actually less self-monitoring than Dash. The only time Scootaloo overtly worries about how she is percieved is when Dash's attention is on her and she is explicitly trying to gain Dash's approval in Sleepless. Also notable is that when she is worrying about how she comes off, she's really clumsy. Outside of Sleepless, she has the best co-ordination out of any of the cast, so it's a decent inference that usually she doesn't worry.
Add to this the fact that Scootaloo brags a lot less than Dash about her capabilities. And she is usually as quick to apologise and shrug off humiliation as the rest of the CMC (Bad Apple, Hearts and Hooves, Show Stoppers). On a conscious level at least, I think Scootaloo is pretty confident (unconsciously is another matter -- but that's headed into headcannon territory, so I won't go there).
Finally, I think her motivation is centred around growing up as much as Bloom's is. From Bad Apple: "We're not babies!" She's just a vehment as Bloom about not telling anyone about Babs. And it's possible (depending on your interpretation) that she was the only CMC member who didn;t need to be goaded into that position in the first place.
1126469 This is what I get, for breezing through the CMC section and parroting my off-the-cuff analysis to Skywriter.
<cough> I mean my nemesis. <shakes fist ineffectually at Skywriter!>
For a lot of bits, especially on Celestia, I actually dug through the episodes again to tease out what was there, but sadly I didn't do that for the CMC. On further thought and (still) off the top of my head, your read on Scootaloo feels pretty good—and since I know you have a Scoots project in the works I suspect you're a bit more up on her character right now than I am. She really didn't get a great role in "A Filly's Guide to Not Making Headlines" either. I think I may go back and have a look at "Show Stoppers" and "Hearts and Hooves" in particular to see if I can get a better read on her, and then I may go mess around with the blog a bit.
My quick reflections on why I characterized each of these the way I did on 'Monster'and other fics:
The core of the whole show are the six elements. Every main character uses one as a primary focus, or a pivot point where their personality is demonstrated.
Applebloom: She's the indomitable one, the unstopable Loyal pony who will do anything for her family or her friends. The leadership position in the CMC tends to go to her because of this.
Scootaloo: Just like her hero Rainbow Dash, Scoots has no throttle setting other than "11" and will dive into any project with an unstopable gusto that should scare the hell out of any parents (which is probably why they're never shown). I pegged her as the kind who is so Generous with her time that she never has any time for just herself (unless she's doing scooter stunts to impress Rainbow) I agree with the Lunaverse portrayal of her father being Heavy Roller, a mechanic of some sort.
Sweetie Belle: The show has her as the Critic, somepony who looks at the crazy things the CMC does and asks "Is this safe?" making her as Honest as any of the three (well, that's not saying much). Her driving force seems to be Creativity, and while living in Rarity's shadow means problems, she has shown that talent in several ways other than clothes.
Plot Hooks: Together they all have Motive for getting their cutie marks, and a burning desire to be 'helpful' to others (which ties back into cutie mark gaining activities)
Celestia: She is the Knight Protector of her ponies, and has a 'mothering' instinct for all of them. I really think she doesn't realize how much like a mother to Twilight she has become, and is not doing what she does for Twilight to love her or take advantage of her (Greedy), but instead for Twilight to reach her full potential (Generosity). Note there's a huge amount of Loyalty and Laughter in there too. (Darned Phillomina)
Luna: I've actually got her pegged as the original bearer of Generosity, how she gave the beautiful night to her ponies but was rejected by them, making her vulnerable to Nightmare. Now she wants to give, but is afraid of being rejected again.
Discord: He's just in it for the laughs.
Shining Armor and Princess Cadence/Cadance: I really don't think of them as one unit. They perform two different purposes. Shining Armor is Support (or Loyalty). He does not have a leadership position, he's always backing up a Princess, be it Celestia or his wife. Cadence is Laughter (or Joy or Pleasure, or Love). The two episodes she's been in, her attempt to bring Joy to others is being subverted, and in both cases she is failing because her anchor (Shiny) is being blocked in some way. In a way, it has to be like that, because together they can deal with problems even Celestia can't handle. So to move the conflict in the plot, Shiny must be Whorfed :)
Zecora: I really see her as Honesty. Deep inside, what are you, really? (B5) Not what you say you are, but what you are after all the lies are stripped away. She has quite a few layers to strip off my next subject...
Trixie: The Element of DisHonesty, or Narcisism. (What do you want? B5 again) Her whole act is an illusion built on lies, which have grown to affect her own off-stage personality. In 'Monster,' she is slowly coming to terms with herself and growing to actually trust others.
Don't have a whole lot to add right now, with my brain occupied on other projects — but this has all been thought-provoking reading, and thank you for going to all the effort to type it out.
1127323 Sorry I've been so bad about replying to this comment. It's length has left me somewhat intimidated.
I kind of like the idea of binning characters in terms of their adherence to the notions presented by the Elements of Harmony. It's not the way I'd approach things personally—the analysis I gave is more in line with my long-standing way of looking at things—but it has a nice thematic circularity to it, and from a critical perspective I think it's a good lens for looking at things, simply because large-scale creative decisions can often resolve into describing a few important character facets you want to explore and doing some mix'n'match with secondary characters to allow them to keep your thematic foci front and center even while your main characters aren't.
I don't know how much more I really have to say, since this is definitely different from my way of viewing the characters, but it makes me happy to have somebody else giving thorough input that I can look at too!
1130094 Well, it's just the old B5 mantra:
Who are you? = Character (Honesty, Loyalty....)
What do you want? = Motivation
Example: Applejack finds a chest of one million bits while plowing a field.
What does she want? To make her family financially secure. What does she do? She invests the money in the farm and puts a college fund away for Applebloom.
Who is she? The Honest thing to do is to look for the original owner and return the bits. So she puts an advertisement in the papers and hires an investigator to research the chest. After a month, a little old mare shows up with papers indicating her grandfather buried the money. After returning the money to the old mare and seeing her off, several days later she finds out the old mare was in actuallity a con artist and the money is gone forever, as well as the money she spent to find the owner. She marks it off as a lesson learned.
Now mix those together: She invests the money and puts aside a college fund before the little old con-artist mare shows up. Conflict between Character and Motivation ensues...
Contrast that with Trixie finding a million bits. Vegas, baby!