Friends Forever #16 Was Pretty Good and You Should Feel Good · 11:55pm May 29th, 2015
First off, I'd like to thank Telaros. He read this comic and liked it so much he wanted to support the artists/publishers/etc. involved with the comic existing. Rather than just toss a few bucks their way to have his own copy, he went above and beyond that and purchased several additional digital copies to give away as gifts to several people who expressed interest in reading it. I was one of the fortunate ones to receive a gift. So you're reading this now at all due to his generosity. I know it is against the rules to write an "attack blog" urging others to harass another user, downvote bomb, and so on. But the opposite I hope is permitted. I've seen others write blogs urging their readers to go read someone else's story, and so on. Well, in this case I'd like to urge anyone who reads this to drop Telaros a little message. PM him or put a comment on his userpage wishing him a good day. Invoke Fluttershy, because anyone who knows me knows that kindness is not one of my strengths. So if I can tap into y'all for that and put a smile on his face, then hopefully the overall gratitude will have been conveyed.
As for the comic itself, purchase a copy if you can. If you're not much for the comics, give this one a try anyway. It's a standalone story and requires no investment in any other comic in order to enjoy it fully. The cute art alone is worth the $4, and you get to enjoy a cute story to go with it.
If you're a fan of Diamond Tiara and/or Silver Spoon chances are you're probably already aware of or have read the comic. So I'll be writing this with the assumption that you aren't a fan of these two. Hopefully you're not the sort who hates them vehemently and will stop reading or be too closed-minded to give them a chance. If you are, it matters not what I write after this, because you're not reading it anyway, right? So, additional assumption is that you're open to giving them a shot. Perhaps I can persuade you.
So, moving on, lets start with one of my personal favorite topics: me. No surprise, I like ponies. I like quite a few of them. I like the world of Equestria. I like to think about these things, write about them, and share my opinions on them. Surprise, I'm writing a blog here. No duh, right? I also like to think about my own thoughts on the topic, like a sort of meta, self-thinky circlejerk of one. How I thought about ponies before I liked them, how I thought of them when I was new to liking them, and how this enjoyment settled/matured. I like to speculate how my enjoyment of ponies might change over time.
Early in my enjoyment of ponies, I didn't much care for the young'uns. I went through a period where I watched episode after episode, eager for each new (to me) story, and found that the ones centered on the CMC were ones I didn't care for all that much. After I'd caught up (at that time, S3 was complete), I rewatched the series a few times. While the first time or two through was pretty much just me sitting there like an open sponge eagerly soaking up anything that was on-screen, as I became familiar with the material, I drifted more into study mode. I was actively looking for things. Trying to see beneath the surface, and get the world and the characters, not just passive entertainment. There was a hunger for more that I sought to fill with art, music, and eventually fanfic. It was this interaction with other fans, and the fan-creations that really warmed me up to the fillies in the show. I found myself avoiding their episodes when rewatching initially, but after seeing them in a new light presented by the fandom, I found myself seeking those episodes out and scrutinizing them just as much as any other part. I went from my first impression of the CMC being annoying little brats to seeing them as rather adorable kids.
So the next part of this blog takes a step away from ponies specifically. Lets talk about heroes and villains for a bit. 
A good story needs a main character that is likeable and relatable. You're supposed to sympathize with this character, so that you care about their problems, and you enjoy their eventual success. There have been many stories in many mediums where this didn't happen, and I didn't enjoy the story. But for the most part, this is the easy part of the story process.You typically get to spend most of the time (be it screentime or wordcount) with the main character, and can show off a lot of their personality. In fanfic, you have a cast of characters to use as protagonists that already have an established fanbase, making the prospect even easier still. The pony fandom is no exception to this by any stretch of the imagination. You can even take blank slates with no established character at all, but find fans of the likes of Lyra, Vinyl Scratch, and Derpy.
Your work is practically all done for you, as a writer, when it comes to the protagonist. But like every story, the protagonist is the easy part anyway. The hard part is the antagonist. What makes a story is the foe. Batman isn't all that interesting on a quiet day in Gotham. He's just some guy with a bunch of money who sometimes puts a weird costume on. You may as well be reading about some random wealthy person in New York. But when the Joker shows up, suddenly things are interesting. There is a reason to watch or read. If it were just any old run of the mill thug on the street, the story would barely be interesting. You can watch COPS or one of dozens of that sort of show and get your fill of regular people involved with crime and the law. Having one of the cops dress up in a weird costume would come across as a cheap gimmick instead of being that interesting. The story needs the Joker. Because the Joker is interesting and entertaining. Unlike the average criminal, the Joker is someone you aren't sure the Bat can beat. Sure, you know that probably at the end he will, but you can suspend that and worry about each setback Bats faces, because you can believe the Joker poses a real danger.
But it's more than just being powerful that makes a villain compelling. I remember playing quite a few JRPGs growing up in which the basic story is that some powerful demon is going to be released. The heroes of legend were only barely able to beat the demon and had to sacrifice themselves just to seal it away for a thousand years. Now it's coming back, and you're not nearly as powerful as those heroes of legend, so what do? The power is there, but the villain isn't very interesting or satisfying. It's more of a natural disaster feel than a person. 
Some are a little less powerful than they think
What makes the Joker interesting, and dare I say the best villain in anything ever, is that he is a person. He doesn't have special magical powers or anything, and even if what he does borders on the fantastic, it feels like he could be a real person. Like some guy next door or down the street just snapped and managed to become the kind of threat the Joker is. He seems real because when you have a chance in any comic, movie, game, or story involving the Joker to get beneath the surface even a little bit, you see a real person with motivations, goals, and a personality. The Joker does senselessly violent and cruel things, until you get a chance to talk to him and see that it makes sense to him. He's all the more frightening and compelling a villain because of that humanity. The world that contains Gotham makes sense in that it not only produced Bruce Wayne, but also produced the Joker. Suddenly some rich dude turned vigilante and a psychopath with a clown face turns into a rich and compelling story because of excellent characters.
Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are not the Joker. No duh, they don't share the same style, have no common elements in their backgrounds or personalities, and they don't operate on the same scope of villainy. But they are antagonists. They're not criminals, but they provide conflict in a setting that emphasizes friendship and harmony. When we first meet them in Call of the Cutie, they serve as simple, easy to grasp antagonists for Apple Bloom. They were designed off of a lot of established tropes, and the fact that most fans hate them shows that they were designed well for the role they are meant to play. When either of them walks on screen, you know they're going to be mean. You know they're going to make the main character (typically Apple Bloom) of the episode feel bad. They serve as motivations for the already neurotic Apple Bloom (and her two friends) to go on and do whatever it is they were already going to do. They amplify and reinforce Apple Bloom's already exaggerated anxiety over her lack of cutie mark. They serve as the "bad/unethical" competitors in Flight to the Finish. Outside of Pinkie Pride, they are never shown just being normal, happy, friendly ponies. But when we do see them, in addition to being "mean" you easily get a sense of who they are. What they consider important. Why they are behaving the way they are. At least on the surface, anyway.
We don't get much beneath that surface though. When watching Call of the Cutie, we spend most of our time with Apple Bloom while she frets over her lack of cutie mark. We see how she gets some (I'd say bad) advice from Rainbow Dash that ultimately forms the charter of the eventual CMC. It's easy to see DT&SS just amplifying her anxiety. It's easy to just see Diamond and Silver as "rich girls who probably don't deserve their pampered life" and you're obviously intended to root for the underdog, the girl from the farm who is just trying to figure out who she is. Twilight Time focused on that "undeserved" aspect more directly, as the CMC pride themselves on learning skills while Diamond promises to perform for the playground full of students, only to have her butler do so instead.
We even got to see a wonderful bit of history in Family Appreciation Day, as once again Diamond and Silver provide the conflict and have Apple Bloom doubt her grandmother's reputation. We learn about Granny Smith's role in the founding of Ponyville.
Set aside the bias of the show for a moment though. Rather than focus on Apple Bloom (or Scootaloo or Sweetie Belle, or the three as a group), focus on how life looks from the eyes of Diamond Tiara. Her grandfather, Stinkin' Rich was also very important to the founding of Ponyville. Without his business sense, zap apples would have probably just been a novelty, and the Apple Family would have just been some isolated group of earth ponies on the edge of the Everfree Forest, until some monster decided to venture forth and massacre them or something. Granny Smith certainly earned the respect she deserves for her part, but so did Stinkin' Rich. We don't know anything about the next generation of Apples, but we do know that Filthy Rich is the next generation in his family. He seems to have done quite well and respectably for himself, founding a successful business, Barnyard Bargains. Similarly, Applejack and Big Macintosh, who are roughly his peers between the two families, have earned a degree of respect for their individual accomplishments as well. They're both hard workers and have done right by their family name as well. The sense that Diamond Tiara is just riding on her family money is something that the show tries to sell to us, but she isn't really any different than Apple Bloom in that regard. Apple Bloom is a rather hard worker herself, but she's given the "main character" bias much like the M6 are, and Twilight Sparkle is especially.
So maybe you just happen to like the Apple family's style more than you like the Rich family's. Alright, but surely some of you are fans of Rarity. She is wealthy. She owns her own business, and sells clothes to ponies who spend most of their time naked. She gives away gems and gifts as seen in Rarity Takes Manehatten, and she values high society and ostentatious things as seen in Sweet and Elite. Twilight Sparkle is not a "poor" pony either. She was the personal student of the monarch of Equestria, and lived in Canterlot, the "wealthy" city. Her family includes the captain of the royal guard, her older brother. Her family is not by any stretch of the imagination the "underdogs" and she comes from an affluent background. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon clearly come from a background of affluence as well, and they value that.
(spoiler warning below)
So let's talk about the comic (finally). With our bias still aside, the comic presents us a view of how things look from Diamond and Silver's side of things. No, they are not very nice fillies. Yes, they think rather highly of themselves (something I can relate to). The opening scene of the comic demonstrates that rather well. You'd almost think this was an actual CMC episode the way Apple Bloom rolls her eyes at Diamond's oral presentation on literary tragedy. Where it gets really interesting though, is when Diamond Tiara changes her mind about participating in the scavenger hunt. If you're paying close attention, the reason why is fairly obvious even if it catches Silver off guard. Scootaloo, simply chatting with her two friends, boasts about their friendship being a clear advantage that will see them as the winners. Stop and think about that for a moment. Does that sound out of character for Scootaloo? No. She is, much like her idol and adoptive big sister, fairly boastful. She thinks rather highly of herself, and of her friends, and the ponies she admires. While her comment wasn't directed at Diamond or intended as a challenge or insult, it is very much the kind of thing that anyone could interpret that way. It's one of those classic cases where you overhear someone claiming to be the best at something, and you just feel the need to show them up. If you're at all a competitive sort, you can relate.
So we start off with Diamond Tiara using her money in a way that doesn't technically break the rules, but certainly breaks the spirit of the rules. She spends more money hiring an assistant than the value of the prizes. I'll avoid fangirling over Prancy Drew for now, and remain focused on Diamond and Silver though. Just know she is adorable as hell, and she is also a worthy reason for purchasing the comic. Back on topic, we also have Silver spying on the CMC and reporting to Diamond what they do. It is telling that they are so familiar with how things go that even if they don't think too highly of the CMC, they recognize that they tend to win and are a valuable source of intel for their own success.
I admit to never having read these. I should fix that.
What follows is an interesting look at how Diamond Tiara is a leader and makes the decisions. Silver Spoon, sometimes with help from Prancy Drew, is the knowledgeable one. The CMC, on the other hand, get the wrong answer early on, and realistically team "Sugar Lumps" should have won. But, as usual, fate conspires to favor the CMC. While the Sugar Lumps earn their victory through knowledge, speed, cunning, money, and cheating, the world literally throws the CMC into position to get the right answer. While if this were framed as a story from the CMC's perspective we could argue that the interference of fate would be poor writing or some symbolic demonstration of karma against the less than ethical choices of the Sugar Lumps, it looks very different from their perspective. At Sugarcube Corner, the clue leading to the last item at Sweet Apple Acres is plainly obvious. It's already pretty obvious that the CMC are (unintentionally) cheating, and much like we saw in Fall Weather Friends, "two can play at that game" seems to be the response. It's less that Diamond cheated just to win, it felt like a justified tactic in response to how unfair things were already. Despite that, the CMC are once again thrown (almost literally this time) to the right spot by a tunnel from the Castle of the Two Sisters straight to the exact right spot in Sweet Apple Acres.
Despite fate favoring the CMC at every turn, Diamond and Silver make it to the end first. At which point the rules are brought up to attempt to deny them their win, only for the fates to throw them a bone as the CMC arrive with Prancy Drew, while Sweetie Belle lags behind enough so that the Sugar Lumps do eventually make it there first entirely. But the prize is turned into a participation award because the band gave enough tickets for everyone (or at least first and second place both) to receive the full prize. Diamond's original intent was never to win the prize, but to deny it to the boastful CMC, and to prove that her friendship with Silver Spoon is just as valid as theirs. Even though earning the prize proved to be beneficial to Diamond in serving as a great gift for her dad, we close the comic with the less than enthused pair and narration (Diamond) rattling off several of the things she gets to look forward to that the CMC won't. But it is obvious the victory is hollow at best, and the story is itself a literary tragedy. A rather bold move in an MLP comic.
The Friends Forever line of comics showcases stories of friendship between pairs of ponies/etc. that are usually less than obvious. The CMC paired with Discord, or Rarity and Babs Seed for example. Diamond and Silver being "unexpected" friends feels out of place at first, but then I recall how often fanfics like to paint Silver Spoon as just a follower, or how they like to split these two up in order to ship one or the other with one of the CMC, and so on. They further fit the line of comics in that they're not a pair most people think much about. They do have a friendship though, and they get each other. Ultimately, friends are people who like each other and spend time together, because they share common interests and accept each other.
Doesn’t that saddle just capture Rarity’s sense of style in everything she does?
Loyalty is one of my favorite of the elements, and in context of friendship you stick by your friends even when they're wrong. Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara have that. You could argue they lack several of the other elements, and that would be why fate is conspiring against them, but again look through their eyes. They're brought up valuing certain things by their families. Just like the CMC, and the M6, and everypony else. They feel things like cutie marks are important, which is a true aspect of the culture of ponies. Despite all that, they're demonized. Unlike "bigger" and more potent villains, they don't have anyone firing weaponized friendship at them or otherwise pointing out to them how they've got the wrong idea on some things, like their less than tight grasp on ethics. Instead they just have people dismissing them, ignoring their accomplishments, and insulting the things they value. When they try, fate itself steps in. They're still young, so it is unreasonable to expect them to be pushed to re-evaluate their behavior and values in the face of ridiculous turns of fate. Karma isn't a good teacher.
So they still make bad choices. They still do mean things. They're still going to serve the role of antagonists rather well. But with this comic, we now can relate to them on a deeper level. We get to see how the world of Equestria has ponies like them in it, despite being a more colorful, harmonic, and happy place. It makes a lot more sense to consider the backgrounds of ponies like Luna>Nightmare Moon, Sunset Shimmer, and the ponies who gave up their cutie marks in Our Town under Starlight Glimmer. Diamond and Tiara aren't shallow bullies; they're real people with values, motivations, and lives. Even though they live in the much friendlier world of Equestria, there is still room for them to become. Will they grow out of it as they mature? Will they learn some important lessons they're clearly missing or not? Will they instead turn out like Trixie or Starlight Glimmer? Will they grow old and bitter like the Olden Pony (Sleepless in Ponyville) without ever learning these lessons? Will they remain forever just under the radar, and be treated as "not nice" ponies that you just don't get along with, or will they stumble on power like Trixie and Starlight Glimmer did, and need to be dealt with?
Just imagine her with an alicorn amulet
As with any story, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are important characters. How they come to be in Equestria was always something we, the audience, had to come up with ourselves. This comic gives us more tools to do so, and while it was still tied closely with the CMC, it gave us a lot of insight into these two in an entertaining and elegant way. Maybe you’ll come out of this blog, and hopefully the comic, still not liking this pair. That’s fine, they’re intended to be disliked. But how you dislike them is important.
Nice analysis. I think Twilight Sparkle would approve.
See, I've never liked this interpretation of loyalty or friendship.
Loyalty isn't standing by your friend even when they're wrong. Loyalty is never being afraid to be the one to look your friend in the eye and tell them that they're wrong. And friendship is being the one that they actually pay attention to.
This was well-written and caught my interest.
Now I'm going to have to go pick this issue up.
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Calling someone out on their shit is only one part of the equation.
Loyalty is also not giving up on them just because they're wrong about something, and being able to put up with their BS when you wouldn't under any other circumstances, having faith that they'll come around. I presume this is what Cryo means. Not letting them off the hook, but still doing everything you can and then some before burning the bridge.
Good blog, hon. I saw this during the con and naturally couldn't do much about it, but yeah, all kickass points, not much I can add. Shame no one's going to listen. Last day of the con, I heard some kids behind me talking about how "Silver Spoon's all right but Diamond Tiara is a straight-up bitch" and how the former "just needs to get out of Diamond's control." Some things will never change, I guess.
Just as wonderful the first second time as it was the first. All that effort to meet such a hollow end. Yeah, now that's how you do tragedy.