a few ramblings, a thank-you, and some other things I suppose · 6:28pm Aug 3rd, 2015
I'm on a train right now to meet a few guys from the 20 Great Stories Story Cabal (specifically, my off-and-on editor/prereader SpaceCommiehttp://www.fimfiction.net/user/SpaceCommie and fellow Cabal member and writer of brilliant fucking stories Sharp Spark). We're gonna head downtown, walk around a bit, possibly visit the Museum of Science and Industry (which is the best museum ever and if you don't go at least once in your lifetime you're gonna miss out), and in general get together, meet up, and get to know each other a little bit better personally and pray to God that, by the end of the day, we don't despise one another.
I'm going to be two hours late, though, because I got the money from gofundme this morning, and I bought Greyhound bus tickets to and from Baltimore and, thus, Bronycon. So I'd like to thank everyone who donated and everyone who considered donating and everyone who wanted to donate but didn't have any cash. It's an immense favor that I asked of you guys, and I'm super happy that I'm part of a fandom that's willing to help each other out financially like that so that we can meet up and hang out and all that happy shit. All of you guys are awesome. You deserve better from me, I know, and I'll try to deliver better the best I can. I'm going to try and take videos of my Bronycon experience and post them on my Youtube channel (which I have, yes, but I never use), so that you can see that yes, I did in fact use the money I raised to go to the con and no, I didn't in fact spend it on video games or some shit. If I wanted to ruffle some feathers I would offer those three guys who gave $100 each something special, but I don't know how the rest of you would feel about that, so I guess we'll put that on the table for now and focus on other things, like specific characters from the show and provoking discussion about him.
So is Spike a Scrappy Doo esque figure who irritates and annoys us with his pointless existence, or is he a character with great potential who has it squandered by writers who don't know how to handle him?
Discuss.
In the context of the show being for little girls, yes, he is a Scrappy Doo. If the show was geared to an older audience, I would definitely say his character potential is being squandered.
Well, Scrappy Doo doesn't deserve all the sh*t he got. Scooby Doo (the live action one with Matthew Lillard and Sarah Michelle Gellar) was a movie that misinterpret the entire Scooby gang, especially Scrappy Doo.
Sure, Scrappy might be annoying, but it is because of him that Scooby Doo didn't get cancelled way back when.
And Spike...well, maybe he's not all that good in the show, but in the fandom, he's the guy that gets the girl...or girls...or guys, depending on what the fandom what to give him.
I suppose the important question here to ask is whether people have, in fact, written worthwhile stories with a depiction of Spike who is (1) in character, and (2) contributing something to the story that would otherwise be left out.
Of the top of my head, The Descendant has written some good stories with Spike as a main character.
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The reason this is relevant is that if such fics can be written, that's prima facie evidence that Spike isn't a worthless character by nature.
The question of whether the show writers waste him, making him a de facto pointless use of airtime, is interesting. "Princess Spike" didn't suck, but at least some of the other Spike episodes were pretty awful, and he could be safely removed from lots of episodes without doing irreparable damage to the plot, which is not good evidence in Spike's favor.
The really troubling thing about the fandom's treatment of him is, of course, that it is, too often, blatant wish-fulfilment by stupid adolescents. But that could be written about a lot of things.