On Amelia · 10:25pm Aug 23rd, 2015
Amelia is easily the most polarizing figure in my story, and I think it's worth discussing my thoughts, as well as the most common feelings and criticisms about her.
This blog post contains spoilers for the entirety of Through the Well of Pirene
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So as I intimated early on, Amelia, one of the three protagonists of Pirene, is an incredibly polarizing figure among my fanbase. She is without a doubt the most talked-about member of the cast, and her conflict does not only define the novel, but the feelings of many of its fans. Villain protagonists are always controversial, but dear gods, I really hit a nerve with her.
To some, she is an excellently written character, whose descent into becoming a villain was expertly done. To others... well, quite the opposite.
It's difficult for me to assess the totality of opinions for and against her. If one put a gun to my head, I'd be forced to say that the overall reaction has probably been negative, but by so slight a margin it's really hard for me to say for sure, just judging by the impression I've received from the comments. From the people whose opinion matters to me the most, the people I created the story with, she is overwhelmingly positive, but no one grows in a tiny echo chamber.
I'd like to begin with her genesis as a character, way back when Pirene was just a splotch on a page.
Originally, Amelia was nothing more than a foil. She didn't have a perspective, and was much younger than she already is. Six or seven at the most. Indeed, the original joking subtitle for the book was "How My Kid Sister Destroyed Celestia."
The Golden Bridle was a story element I wanted to use even prior to Pirene, and in this earliest version, Daphne was essentially the "destined" villain. She was meant by the then-unknown forces to take it up. This did not work, due to the incompetence of the goblins meant to kidnap her and groom her into that figure. Instead, they take her enthusiastic little sister instead.
In this original version, she gets to the Bridle very early and takes Celestia, but it's not quite as horrific as the final version made it out to be. Celestia is still able to talk, but lil Amelia is having too much fun with the magical flying princess of ultimate power.
The key theme, which I did maintain in some form, is that childhood innocence can become callousness.
This original Amelia fell away for a number of reasons as the story "grew up" in my planning, and especially as I realized its central flaw, which was a total lack of agency on Amelia's part. She was an object, not a character, and I didn't really want that.
Thus was born the aching prodigy, and everything fell into place for me. Amelia as she was snapped into place so clearly, so perfectly, that it's like she was waiting there all along, tapping her foot and waiting impatiently for me to notice her - one of her major life issues, really! This Amelia was clever, sharper by far than the other two protagonists if not as learned, and she used it to steer the plot. Whenever someone captured her, she turned it against them.
There was a weakness to her, though. Someone like her doesn't get off easy in school – they're instant targets for bullies, so I knew she wasn't happy. She has a sister who is dealing too much with an inner loss to really open up to her. Her parents are always busy with this or that and don't have time for her.
Hers is an innocence, but it's the willful innocence of someone who wants desperately for things to work out and for people to love her that she grows bitter at things that get in her way. She turns her face away from the awful consequences of her own actions. As she grows, the consequences of her actions start piling up, and she can no longer ignore them. Near the end, she keeps doing bad things because she's angry and hateful at herself for having screwed up so badly - and only when Leit forces her to admit that does she begin to realize how to stop the cycle.
All of this transforms Amelia into the rock that the Morgwyn throws to change the fate of the world. She steals her sister's destiny.
It also leads to what is probably the single most common criticism of Amelia:
Amelia isn't realistic because she's too young. An 8 year-old can't possibly be this clever or this bitter.
To that I must say: since when?
I will freely acknowledge that the vast majority of 8 year-olds in this world of ours are nothing at all like Amelia. That, I've never doubted or questioned.
Thinking that there are no 8 year-olds as clever or as angry as Amelia, however, is simply dead wrong.
I identify more personally with Daphne, really, or with Leit, or even a little with Naomi, but Amelia does carry with her a part of me, and that is the anger I had as a child, coupled with the will to make it real. I, too, had a massive vocabulary from a steady diet of fiction – hell, my own mother would mock me for it, and when I confronted her years later she said it was because she felt intimidated. I watched science and history programs religiously, so I had an excellent grasp of the world at a young age. Children are thoughtful, they are brilliant. That a lot of children you know don't exercise this is because they are not encouraged to mature in the way others are.
I dare you to go out and do social work, to find children who have had to raise themselves. Amelia may have had loving parents, but she did a lot of her own studying and a lot of taking care of herself, because they encouraged her to be free-thinking and independent. There are 8 year-old children out there with the life experience to make her ashamed.
I can go "blah blah, Amelia has a native capacity for brilliance because of her connection to Pirene", but that's just an excuse. Amelia is a brilliant 8 year-old because brilliant 8 year-olds exist, and I wrote a story about a brilliant 8 year-old. I always try to respect children of whatever age, because I remember being overlooked by those who were older than me, and I know that a lot of them felt the same way.
Could I have countered the criticisms by aging her up a few years without seriously impacting the story? Maybe. I would have had to sacrifice some more of her naivety, perhaps, but it would have been doable. The thing is, though, I don't really find the criticism to be credible.
In a bit, you'll be hearing from one of my friends who does identify with Amelia directly, and she will doubtless cover this far more extensively than I did.
The other common criticism comes from those who wish her harm because of the things she's done.
To this, I say – whoa there, take it down a notch. I've seen it as recently as today, with people saying she got off far too easily at the end.
So this is an interesting one on a few levels, despite my dismissive comment earlier. It has to do, I believe, with our native notions of justice.
There's a very tiny minority of people who wish she would have died, and I don't know that there's any reasoning with that. It's a very emotional response, wishing someone who hurt you or other things you loved would simply die. It's a simplistic one, and I don't really know that I need to address it directly. To be brief, I don't think it's good because it serves no purpose, killing her would undo none of what she did, and it would not prevent future misery by any reasonable standard, therefore killing her is unnecessary and therefore shouldn't be done. Easy.
To the more common branch, there's the far more reasonable idea that she simply wasn't punished enough at the end for her actions. Really, I can totally sympathize. She killed two people (who richly deserved it – both Xerxes and Nessus were ongoing threats to the lives of others) and beat another almost to death (who did not deserve it). She stole Celestia and Rainbow Dash's agencies, threatened others, caused property damage across Equestria, and almost certainly led to one or two accidental deaths.
And yet, what happens at the end? Amelia is allowed to walk free. Not only that, but she's given a position of authority for her trouble. How is that just punishment?
So, in the theory of criminal justice, there are only four functions of punishment: to deter, and to rehabilitate, retribution, and to incapacitate. Any application of punishment must be addressed to one of these four principles.
The deterrence function of punishing Amelia makes no sense. Her example is not one that a lot of people really have any opportunity to follow, and there's really no deterrence function to be gained.
Retribution isn't even worth considering. Equestria is fairly enlightened as far as criminal justice goes, I'd imagine, and Celestia would neither derive satisfaction from retributive punishment nor permit others to do so.
Incapacitation is only necessary when there is reason to believe that the perpetrator will continue their actions. There is no reason to believe this, none at all, and I'll cover that in a second in the final function.
Rehabilitation.
There are some people who don't like to believe that she has in fact been rehabilitated, and this is a complex subject. In general, I understand where they're coming from. Here on our mundane Earth, we can't really say for absolute certainty that someone who claims they have been rehabilitated in fact are. Hilariously, Amelia does not claim this, but I'll get to that.
Through the course of the story, Amelia goes through a few phases.
She begins as an innocent, a little snippy and bratty perhaps, but otherwise untrammeled.
When she escapes Phonyville, she begins her journey as a manipulator, but still remains innocent, and she's seen in this mode when she pulls Wire along, when she abuses the trust of the CMC, and when she tricks and fools her way through the goblin city of Mag Mell. At this stage, she has the delusion that she's invincible, buoyed by her successes and convinced that everything she's doing will work out in the end.
This stage ends violently when she fails to save the CMC from the Cup Palace and Wire declares her hatred. This event completely shatters her remaining innocence, and she begins to accept herself as someone who really isn't all that nice. She maliciously manipulates the goblins aboard the flying Wand Fortress and leaves them to burn, cutting her last remaining bridges. When Rainbow Dash offers her the last life line, she kicks it aside because she no longer feels that there's anything in herself worthwhile.
The penultimate phase is when she's in full control of the Bridle, ripe with the powers of a demigod, and she realizes that she has to make up for what she's done, but is convinced that she is well and truly alone. Her sister can't help her, her parents can't help her. In her mind, she's become so irredeemable that there is only one thing she can do: go back to a time when she was innocent and prevent it from happening. To this end, she commits her worst acts, justifying it to herself as the cost of fixing the very things she's doing.
The final stage comes after Leit convinces her to back off, and she Vanishes the Bridle and accepts responsibility in this life instead of trying to break the world and shirk it. By now, she's absorbed a good chunk of Celestia's life and against that wisdom she is powerless.
So, with all that said, how do we – and more importantly, the characters – know that Amelia is rehabilitated? After all, if she was willing to do awful things in the pursuit of correcting her mistakes, who's to say she won't do it again?
Well, you don't have to take my word for it. I'll break it down step-by-step:
1) She isn't the same person she was when she left.
In a thousand ways, she has changed. She grew through her journey, but she was also changed by her actions. Her time in Mag Mell partially goblinized her. When she touched the Bridle, it awakened a demigod nature in her, making her not only stronger and faster but also clearer of thought. Most importantly, though, the use of the Bridle exposed her to Celestia's memories. At first, this only made her more resentful, but as time went on she started to become more like her. She has trouble at times distinguishing her own memories from Celestia's, until the use of the Bridle became like enslaving herself.
2) The Bridle is a two-way street.
Just as Amelia absorbed Celestia's memories, Celestia absorbed hers. There is no part of Amelia's life that is unknown to her, a blip on her vast consciousness, and she knows exactly what went through Amelia's head at the end of her imprisonment, and why Amelia will not only never do what she did, but she will endeavor to ensure it can never happen again.
3) Other people have preternatural abilities to assess her future impact.
Yeah, it can be a bit of a cop-out if done wrong, but there's no shortage of diviners in this story. If Discord gets off, so does Amelia.
Amelia's punishment is rehabilitation. It isn't done, either - it wasn't all forgiven on the conclusion of the novel.
In her near future, she will repay the property damage she caused. She will apologize to all the people she harmed, directly or accidentally, and some of them will never forgive her (Rainbow Dash, for instance.)
Most importantly, though, her entire immortal life will be dedicated to the cause both of preventing people from doing what she did, and using her power to help others. As the Wand King, she will end slavery in Mag Mell, she will reform criminal justice among the goblins, she will forge alliances between the Courts, and one day she will lead the goblins when the final conflicts come and, maybe, at last have some peace. She will mentor lost people like herself and guide lost souls. She will hunt down Titans and their spawn like the Morgwyn with the help of her new "sister", Morgan.
Amelia hasn't forgiven herself, and doing so will only come through work, and that work will take her decades, if not centuries. She can never go home again, because there is no home for her to go to.
That, ultimately, is why I think that she's not only being punished enough, but that honestly she could stand to be a little easier on herself. Her constant internal self-flagellation will make her into someone worthy of Celestia's legacy.
Was that all in the novel? No. But I plant the seeds, I show how and why it'll be all possible. If you get to the end and don't conclude that Amelia will devote her life to good works, then I suggest reading it again.
Also, those of you who still feel she isn't punished enough, I ask you: what do you want to happen?
Do you want her imprisoned? Why? What would that accomplish or solve?
Do you want her maimed or harmed in some fashion? Why? That strikes me as retaliatory justice and more importantly, even a lasting, painful wound would pale in comparison to the anguish.
Do you want her to be forced to labor in some fashion? That is literally what is happening, only Celestia doesn't need to clap her in irons. She's doing it of her own accord, willingly, as part of her penance.
Do you want her to have some sort of official sanction? No idea what that would do.
Do you want her to have the hate and enmity of others? Well! She has that in spades, let me list a few:
1) Rainbow Dash. This is the most personally cutting. Rainbow will grow from her fear and betrayal, but she will never entirely forgive Amelia. Perhaps in a century or two, things will cool off between them enough that they can get past it.
2) Marble Stone. She took the Knight job almost entirely because she didn't trust Amelia. She learns to respect her, but will never like her.
3) The entire city of Canterlot. She is persona-non-grata, and they will despise her for generations.
4) The entire Sword Court. They could have overlooked her beating King Alisha, but A) she had no reason to, and they resent that, and B) she only won because she was controlling one of the most powerful demigods in the setting, which they regard as cheap. King Alisha accepted her Sword back with her apologies, but did not forgive her. She expects Amelia to work it off - and recommends she not be found alone with Sword goblins.
The final reason some people don't like her is because they don't think she's likable, and to that, I have to say - well, fair enough!
I can't dictate people's tastes, and if you don't like Amelia because you don't care for or about her, that is completely acceptable. Maybe I could have done more to make her likable. I wrote her to my tastes, and those of the people I loved, and accepted that I couldn't please everyone.
Really, I'd be surprised if I changed many minds with this, but I felt it was important to say. I didn't create her haphazardly, and I didn't pursue anything in this novel without thinking deeply about it. I hope that, even if you don't like the result, you can respect that.
Thanks for reading.
To my friend Solana, Amelia is a very important character, one with whom she identifies strongly and was part of the reason she was so attracted to it. In a way, she helped me shape her and everything that was to follow. I asked her to say a few words of her own, if she liked, and here they are:
I’ve known Ether Echoes for some time now, and assisted with the writing of Well by offering advice and critiques on a lot of elements in the story. One of the most interesting things about the story itself has been the nature of the comments it receives. It seems to be a polarizing force in general, with most people either hailing it as the salvation of Humans in Equestria, or else denouncing it for succumbing to the archetype and indulging in unrealistic conventions and characters.
This is most clearly present with the character of Amelia Ocean, who is the de facto antagonist for much of the story. There is a lot of criticism surrounding her, and I was asked to touch on some of the points myself. I will do my best to respond to as many issues as possible, but keep in mind that I am working from memory.
The most frequent criticism I see is that she is not a realistic child character. She’s too smart, her vocabulary is too extensive. “I didn’t behave this way as a child.” Which I find a bit ridiculous because it’s like saying “If I don’t like red wine then that means no one does, and I don’t know why people keep wasting their time making it. They must not like money very much.”
This is actually an important point, and one that I think is important to dispel. Children are ‘not’ the vapid characters generally presented in fiction. The only memorable child character I can recall from Stephen King was Jake Chambers. In the sea of Stephen King child characters, he’s the only one who doesn’t seem to behave intentionally like a doofus. He is a very mature, very intelligent young man who has many points in common with Amelia. In my experience most children are actually like this once you place them in a situation where they can actually open up.
I’m not saying every child is a genius, but for the most part children are people, they have mature observations to offer, and sincere issues that they grapple with. What’s more, most children are more ‘rational’ than their adult counterparts. As children our worldview is still undeveloped, constantly changing. We are encouraged by our development to adopt ideas and then test them for value. Like the child that follows every statement you make with ‘why’? It’s not always just to piss you off, I promise.
This mindset that children are somehow like domesticated animals who haven’t grown into their serious shoes yet is honestly a bit caustic. It permeates society in many places, including, ironically, at school. For an example of what I’m talking about, see this video: https://youtu.be/0g2WE1qXiKM?list=PLOGi5-fAu8bGpo29_WQwMYKrljg7ECAl1
(ironically the poster child of this video is named Amy.)
When I was 8, I spent all of my time in a library reading every book I could find in the adult’s section. I did stick to the children’s section briefly, but quickly decided that whatever I was looking for wouldn’t be tucked away there. I bought do it yourself chemistry kits from yard sales and the mall whenever we visited, with whatever money I could save up, and was growing crystals in my mom’s oven just to see if I could. All of this was undirected and unsupported, it’s just what I did.
I used large words constantly, not because I was some kind of a genius, but because I was a kid. And children, as any parent knows, will recite pretty much whatever they hear. I encountered these words in science books, or works of adult fiction, and then quietly slipped them into my own vocabulary just because it was what I was familiar with. I certainly wouldn’t consider myself a genius. It’s almost a matter of speaking a different language. What I was exposed to seemed different from what a lot of children were exposed to. The same is true of Amelia, especially considering what her parents ‘do’.That her matrilineal family is closely bound to a living goddess is incidental, I’m sure, but even ignoring that she’s essentially an 8-year old demigod, her behavior is not necessarily exceptional, it’s fairly typical of a young girl with atypical interests.
The other big source of criticism I see is regarding the conclusion of her character arc. I can sympathize with a lot of people, to an extent, because Pirene is almost a story that demands a sequel. The reason for this is simple - her character arc has not concluded by the end of the novel. It’s really as simple as that, and I think it’s a big source for the heated discussion regarding her punishment, or lack of it. Frankly, Amelia’s story does not end at the end of Well, and I was supposed to continue that with a story of my own, but simply never got around to it. When your financial income is as low as mine, and you’re forced to work as often as I do, finding the energy to write something that cannot and will never be officially published is a taxing prospect.
So that’s a point I can concede on.
The other aspect to this argument is because of just how absolutely traumatizing the Bridle is. I admit, the first time I read the part where she bridled Rainbow Dash, I was more than a little pissed off, doubly so with Celestia. It might even be a bit abusive to the audience because it almost doesn’t have to work at violating you. I maintain that after constant edits that the writing does not try to take advantage of this as a way of avoiding hard work. The violation was necessary, because this always had to happen in a story about the Golden Bridle. This is a mythological relic that was used to enslave other sapient beings. Demigods, no less.
It really shows the mindset a lot of these religions have, with regards to subjugation and whether or not it’s ‘good and just’. The really scary thing, though? Mankind is just as subjugated by this system. I feel like the bridle itself captures that really well. Amelia was a slave to the bridle’s story before she was ever even born, just as Celestia was a slave to her after she made use of it. The violation does run both ways because it is very difficult, borderline impossible, to use the bridle on someone else without also accepting the influence it has on you.
The mayan creation myth talks about gods who struggled and struggled to create humanity. Once they finally succeeded in this, mankind had all the clarity, wisdom, and foresight of the gods. This terrified them, and it was considered ‘not OK’. As a result the gods stole the sight of man away, limiting them, essentially putting them to sleep. In spite of this knowledge that everyone seems pretty open with, the Mayans did not hate their gods. They honored and respected them, and considered this situation ‘just’.
How can you find a more apt metaphor for the bridle? How can you find a more apt metaphor for this mindset than in the Bridle? To be quieted, and then accept it. It’s horrifying, but we do it every day, and maybe that’s why people have such an intense emotional response to the bridle itself, and Amelia by being the face behind it.
But it’s worth noting that Amelia is not the face behind it. She’s bridled as surely as Celestia is, by the Morgwyn, or perhaps more ultimately, the adversary who created it to begin with.
I find I have to agree with her. The Bridle is an evil thing, not only in what it does to its targets, but what it does to the people holding it. It ruined humanity as thoroughly as it did the other races, tainting them with its foul heritage. Healing that damage will be the work of immortal lifetimes.
I hope you enjoyed Pirene, and that you'll enjoy my works to come - most of them, outside Pirene, I should hope!
Seeing as I've partially catalyzed this, what it comes down to me is a few bits of the following :
On Deterrence - Others may lack the ability to follow Amelia's exact path, yet that does not mean there is no deterrent effect. To me, her conclusion inspires the same rage I get when I look at 2008 and how those most responsible for the economic crisis walked away without justice being done. Now, for them, you can argue that's different due to a lack of remorse - and yet, when our leaders aren't held accountable for their actions, what right have we to hold those beneath to account?
The greatest sin of hers may have been to Celestia, yet there are thousands of others whom she wounded, and plenty whose minds she simply stole away besides Celestia & Rainbow Dash. She's committed a crime that's as bad as if not worse than rape, and 'I'm sorry, truly' is not adequate. I don't know -what- would be the appropriate punishment there, yet in the case of the story, the only punishment she really carries is her own guilt.
And I mean, big whoop to that. It doesn't undo anything she has done, it does nothing to end the pain she has inflicted on others. She ends up getting everything she asked for at the start, even if the form isn't how she desired it.
Nevermind she nearly destroyed the entire universe, and did so for entirely selfish reasons. That's really where it comes from for me, I think. Her actions are those of a nasty, spiteful individual who by the end -is- entirely unlikeable, and yet all it takes is her having a 'I was wrong' moment and poof, everything is wiped away. She's entirely undeserving of the absolution she is given.
The murders she commits? You may find a reader or two who finds those unacceptable, but I'd daresay most see that and don't care, because yes, those killings are in a way just. It's everything else that's - well, if you're me, much of her actions are in many ways worse than murder. I can think of little more horrifying that the idea of being prisoner in my own body while it is forced to act completely contrary to everything I stand for.
And the thing of it is that she knew exactly what it was going to do; she knew its power and willfully used it anyway. 'I'm sorry' is not adequate for that. I don't know what the exact just punishment there is. I mean the scale of the crime to me is beyond all of that, the scope is really beyond what we can actually have happen, yet all this time later the anger and loathing at all of it still boils in me.
And that's part of why it's so frustrating. I don't want this; I'd love to exorcise it from my mind, yet its a demon still dwelling there and haunting at me.
Lastly, to the idea that Amelia is as much a victim : Bollocks to that. I mean, the entire point of the story is it's about prophecy and destiny being upended, and that people are free to make their own destiny. She may have been manipulated, yet she still chose to enact her evil. Rainbow/Celestia never had that option. There was no time they could have rejected what was done to them. Amelia at any point could have gone ahead and said 'No'. She could have fought against it. Perhaps she would have lost - addicts to relapse, after all - but at no point does she even make that attempt. She simply delves deeper into the darkness and then...poof.
If I were to pick Amelia's 'redemption' as a useful allegory for anything? It's what Christians would point to as the salvation given by God to the Sinner - someone entirely unworthy of said Grace, who is given it anyway. I find there something funny in that, given other elements of the universe.
The tl;dr version - I still heavily dislike her and the ultimate cause is because the horrifying elements of the story stick with me and eat at me, and I have been unable to exorcise those demons yet, and I really really do not care for all the blech that it induces within me.
So, I was asked to write something in response to the usual criticisms I see regarding Amelia. What was pasted above is kind of a short rambling summary of the thoughts I dwelled on while on my way to lunch.
I'm not really proud of how coherent it is, but I've been working 60 hours a week lately and not operating on as much sleep as I would like.
I feel like I can and should elaborate on this, as a way of providing evidence for her being a realistic character. It'll have to wait though, because busy and stuff.
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Honestly, though, what would do that? Like, what would you have done differently in the story to accomplish those goals? I'm not disagreeing with you or EE, mind you. I'm just curious.
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In truth, I really do not know. I mean, she can't un-inflict the mental....ugh, I want to avoid using the term 'mind rape', but I can't think of anything else that comes close to capturing the scale of it. I really do not know what would be an adequate penance; merely that I feel extremely strongly that as-is, she is not paying it. Being able to say 'This is what it should be' would go a long way towards alleviating my own internal conflict regarding the ending. But as is, it simply refuses definition and that makes it all worse.
3342131
Your comment so flagrantly mischaracterizes my counter criticism that I wonder if you even read it completely.
To summarize:
No, she didn't just go 'Haha! Gosh, I'm sorry, that was really stupid of me wasn't it? Oh well, no harm, no foul.'
She went "I am going to spend the next 1000 years making up for what I have done today, and for some of you it will never be enough."
If you think this is the former instead of the latter, that is an error of fact.
I really hate to say it after you went to such lengths to counter the view, but I still think the story would have been a bit better off with an above-average 12-year-old in Amelia's role instead of a genius-level 8-year-old. I don't think you'd have had to sacrifice a significant amount of naivety in the process and it would have made the character a bit more plausible and relateable to me.
It's not really a huge deal to me, though, since as Amelia's adventure progressed she started getting magically aged-up pretty quickly and that changed her away from her starting state quite dramatically as the story progressed. Both approaches would have wound up on the same trajectory soon enough. It's just a matter of me as a reader understanding and empathizing with the character initially. I recall early moments where I went "wait, a little girl wouldn't normally think/say/do something like that" even before she started getting much in the way of magic maturity boosts. Made it a little unclear what was happening with her.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that particular point. Ah well.
I'm just going back through the early chapters, and Amy is so delightful. When she gets the goblin to argue with a rock? Mwah! wonderful! Which is why it hurts so much knowing what's going to happen to her down the road.
3342289 I could chime in with something new about this whole issue, but I think I'll just copy and paste what I said about it over a year ago.
I don't know. I don't have a particular hatred for Amelia. When we were introduced to her, she was precocious, and sometimes obnoxious, but not villainous. Things went downhill from there, and I dislike her for what she became, but I don't feel any need to hate her in the aftermath. I tend to think that her descent into villainy is as much a horror story as it is anything else, as we watch her lose herself, one small piece at a time, to evil. Evil isn't some Sauronesque grand force, like a D & D campaign that was drafted as a bad pastiche of Tolkein; it's making a poor choice out of convenience, or pique, or boredom, or jealousy, or greed, or any of a thousand other petty temptations, The horror lies in how damnably easy it is to make those poor choices by yielding to temptation. I'd like to think that, even as thoroughly damned as she is, she still has an outside chance at redemption.
If I were to write an epitaph for her, it would be by stealing a line from elsewhere:
For what it's worth, I'm content to let the matter rest there.
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I just want to point everyone to Von Snootingham's post. He said it far better than I did, and hats off to him.
3342361 You're right - Von Snootingham said it more thoroughly, more completely, and more eloquently than I could even hope to do.
3342350 Kudos [tips hat]
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But it's not "I'm sorry". It's "I'm sorry, I will never do it again, and I promise I use my immense, immeasurable power to make things as right as I can, and to ensure that the world will be in a better state than it was before I committed my crime."
The important thing is that the apology comes with a vow to turn the loss inflicted by the crime into a net benefit.
If you punish someone who is genuinely apologetic without giving them a chance to redeem themselves, then nothing is gained, and the cycle just begins anew.
I'm not an expert on Christian belief, so forgive me if I completely get this wrong, but here's the thing that doesn't make sense about that allegory: God is omniscient. He knows everything, including the true heart of a sinner. He can tell whether a person is truly repentant for their crimes or not. He also knows how repentant that person is, and what lengths they will go to repay their crimes. That makes him the best, most infallible authority on a person's fate.
We as humans cannot read minds, and so it's a difficult concept for us to understand. But, according to belief, God can. If you had that kind of knowledge, if you could truly know beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone was genuinely repentant, and would go on to do great things that may save many, many more lives than were lost... would you still sentence that person to die?
3342300
I'm not saying she does that. I entirely get she feels horribly guilty, so on and so on. But it still comes across that way to me emotionally - that the reaction by the universe at large is 'Well, you feel adequately bad, so we will leave it there.'
Essentially, I am saying her guilt is not enough; that her feeling bad does not absolve her of the crimes she committed, and that when I read the ending I still feel she got off incredibly lightly given the magnitude of what exactly she wrought.
3342350
The thing is she's not punishing herself through it, she's punishing everyone else. If she were simply cutting, or some other self-destructive behavior, then yes, I'd feel that has merit. But the ones paying the price for her actions are Rainbow, and Celestia, and Equestria at large - and nearly the entire universe. So her knowing she should stop, and doing it anyway? That makes her far worse than someone who believes themselves to be in the right. At least if she were wrapped up in misguided certainty that it was 'for the greater good', or something similar, well, it would be a lot easier to absolve her of it.
But she knew what she was doing was wrong the entire time, and did it anyway. And yea, in the real world, guilt alone does not equate to justice; as I say, I do not know what would actually be Just, yet I feel very strongly that as-is, what is done is far too light.
Like, the Morgwyn? That I can call Just - and in many ways the Morgwyn is far less evil in its actions, because of its very nature. It does wrong because of what it is, trying to end a wound because it literally isn't understanding the rest.
All Amelia ever had to do at any point was go 'Help' and she would have had it. She could have backed away on the Goblin Ship, or with Rainbow, or Celestia - time and time and time again she could have turned away and did not. She knew evil, consciously chose evil, and her redemption to me is something that isn't hers to grant herself, and her penance is not hers to choose.
3342388 ...But that's why she's dedicating the rest of her life to making up for her mistakes.
Personally I thought Amelia was a great character and I thoroughly enjoyed her journey throughout the story. That's pretty much the entirety of my thoughts on the matter.
Amelia was very well written, I will say that. But my fondness for her turned into pure hatred during the whole Mag Mell ark. Then my hatred turned into just not caring about her, this is possibly because by the end I found her completely unrelatable. I am sure if that is the whole reason, but I don't think I can explain why I just stopped caring about her.
I do recall after she Bridled Celestia I was getting re invested in her, but by then my opinion of her was cemented.
I was fine with her end punishment though, I though it was well done.
I just liked the other two main characters a lot more.
3342361 I think I was miss-targeted with this comment, I actually have no problem with the lack of "punishment". I frankly didn't even realize that this was something people had a problem with, especially given that this is a setting where a malicious god of chaos who ruled Equestria for who knows how long was "reformed" and forgiven so easily.
My only problem with Amelia's character arc was how various obstacles kept me from connecting with her throughout it as well as I might otherwise have. The ultimate outcome was fine with me.
3342388 I don't know how else I can explain it. I thought I was pretty explicit. The reason she didn't ask for help was, as I said, she felt she didn't deserve it. She began to see herself as a bad person, as much as she didn't like that, and "bad people do bad things", which is why she continued. Also, I think you're equating "bad" and "evil". There is a very clear deliniation between these two concepts. One can do bad and be bad without necessarily being evil.
That, I think, may be the problem here. With mass media today, stories tend to be made with more mass market appeal in mind. That means being simplified. Rather than have layers of complexity and moral grey area, stories tend to have a clearly defined "bad guy". He's the guy in the cloak and eyepatch, cackling away in his lair about his dastardly plan to steal the world's supply of puppies and ice cream. It makes it easier for more people to dislike him and enjoy the story, and therefore, sell more product. And even disregarding the mass market aspect, it's just human nature to want to think that we personally are good and to dislike "bad people". If the villian appears as a real person, with real person ideas and feelings, and shades of complexity? Why, what if we start to identify with them? We might be bad too! It's easier for us to dislike someone who has no redeeming (and humanizing) qualities.
This is why World War II is such a popular historical subject. Look at other wars like Vietnam or either Gulf War. Everything is shades of moral ambiguity. "Why were we there? Should we have gotten involved? Who's the enemy?" Etc. But World War 2 was a war wherein most of the world united against a regime that was comitting atrocities on a genocidal scale, led by a man almost out of a corny film serial. It's easy to feel good about ourselves swooping in to rescue a world on the brink and saving the lives of millions from a tyranical madman. Less so about invading sovereign nations for their natural resources.
I've kind of gotten on a tangent a little. The point is, that "bad" and "evil" are two very different things. I can punch my mother in the face. That's a bad thing. Is it an "evil" thing? Am I evil? If I refrain from doing it, does it automatically make me a "good" person? The answer is neither. Good, bad, and evil are all very complicated ideas with many layers of complexity all dependent on context. Amy, while a protagonist, is a villain in the story. But she isn't a typical cackling comic book villain. She isn't evil. She's a person. A kid who got caught up in things bigger than her and made the wrong choices in dealing with them. Yes, she did bad things, knowing they were bad things. Does that make her bad? I don't think so. She was being bad, but she wasn't a bad person. She knew they were bad things, but she didn't derive any pleasure from doing them. Quite the opposite. And now she greatly regrets doing the bad things and is actively working to make up for them. That's a pretty good person in my book.
3342399
As I said; I recognize she feels guilty and is determined to do what she can to achieve absolution, but I do not feel that is truly holding her to account for her actions. I cannot articulate why, though I am trying; merely that, to me, that is inadequate.
3342587 Perhaps the reason why you can't articulate it is because you demand punishment for the sake of punishment itself, or as some form of retribution, and not really for any other practical reason.
I think Ether's approach to punitive action is instrumental. He sees punishment as a tool, a means to accomplishing a goal--in this case, to make a criminal see the error of their ways, be repentant, and take the steps necessary to make up for their crimes. Or, if they can't be reasoned with, to deter them from future crimes.
He sees punishment as a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.
The thing is, everything that one could hope to achieve by punishing Amelia has already been achieved. There is literally no point to punishing her further. It would be purely ceremonial, done for the vindictive gratification of those harmed, but that gratification will be temporary and fleeting, and serve no practical purpose in the long run.
In fact, at this point, punishing Amelia will simply hinder attempts to make it up to all the parties she wronged. If we imprison her, then she'll be stuck to rot and brood in a cell, where she can commit no action, good or bad. If we kill her, she will be given no opportunity to do ANYTHING to make up for her crimes, and it'll be a waste of her immeasurable power.
In the real world, if we had no assurances of her sincerity, it would make sense, because we don't know whether she would commit those crimes or not again. But in this world, where we have Celestia's assurance that Amelia will be true to her word, punishment would be superfluous, a waste of time, and entirely destructive. It'd be like trying to drown a flame that is nothing but glowing ashes.
Punishment is integral to our society. But it is a weapon we should only wield if it will make things better. The end goal should always be to make things better. And, in this instance, it serves no purpose but to slow, and maybe even reverse, progress.
3342578
I disagree with a few points here. First, I am not saying I want a mustache-twirling dastardly rogue; rather, an effective villain can come in many, many varieties. An easy one is Voldemort - yes, he is unambiguously evil, yet in his own eyes he is the hero of his story. But better than that? I don't know if you have seen the new Daredevil on Netflix - yet the journey for the villain there is one of my absolute favorites, because you see someone walking the dark path in a way you WANT them to win. I spent most of that rooting for the person I knew would become the villain, because they were portrayed in a way that made me share their goals, even though they were willing to go to reprehensible lengths to get there.
Complexity in villain is not a bad thing at all.
What I am taking issue with here is that 'I am bad, and bad people do bad things' line as justification. It isn't, to me - at all. Had it been self-harm she was inflicting, I could understand that. Self-destructive behavior as a response to self-loathing, I get. But she crossed lines, repeatedly, that there is no acceptable reason to cross, and she crossed them knowing full well what that meant - and still did not hesitate. She didn't care what pain she was inflicting in her pursuit of 'justice' for herself. Oh, she offered platitudes, yet not once did she hesitate. And yes, I am comfortable calling that flat-out evil, just as breaking into a stranger's house and killing them in cold blood is evil.
The difference between 'bad' and 'evil' is the intent. She knowingly inflicted pain, repeatedly, because she placed her own selfish desires above everything else. Yes, she's not a mustache twirling villain - evil rarely is. But her actions, why she does them, what pain she inflicts? I can comfortably condemn that as vile.
3342622
Oh my god, this is a perfect statement. This is one of those game changing statements that people quote forever.
Oh, and I love TGoM. Kudos!
3342632
You think the things Amelia did weren't self-harmful? I argue that the things she did hurt her a hell of a lot more than self-inflicted wounds or even suicide would have. She might not have been hurting her own body, but she was hurting worse: her soul. It was all self-imposed psychological torture.
3342634
3342622
I'm saying, bluntly, I do not care at all about what wounds she has inflicted upon herself. Amelia's own pain becomes meaningless to me because I'm looking at it from the perspective of the victim. When I see her, I see every bully I ever faced, and am being told 'Their actions are hurting them, too.'
And that may be true, but the thing is? I don't care. Because their actions are hurting -me-, and their self-torment doesn't change that I am the one suffering for it.
I read this story not from her perspective, but from those of her victims. To me, her own feelings aren't important; it's Rainbow, and Celestia, and the rest of those she has hurt. And in that regard? If locking Amelia up will bring them a measure of closure, a measure of peace? Then yes, I do feel good comes out of that. If punishment of Amelia aids in closure, then that punishment is just.
Do I think there needs to be an eye for an eye? No.
Ether Echoes brought up Buffy, here - and I think Buffy provides a good analogy. Amelia is like Faith. Faith screws up, joins the dark side, and eventually comes back around and realizes her mistakes - at which point she promptly turns herself in and is sent to prison. You could argue that she too has realized what she did was wrong and is doing no good in prison, yet that isn't the point; when the time comes, in fact, she promptly breaks out to help save the world, then returns to continue her sentence.
Yes, an eye for an eye makes the world blind; but sometimes, a bruise for an eye can be a way to allow healing to begin.
3342383
Why did you respond to me? I didn't say the quoted text.
Swan pls :(
3342518
I think he tagged everyone because it was a cool comment that added a lot to the discussion.
3342697 I have no clue what you're talking about now. I don't give a damn whether it hurts her on the inside either. That doesn't matter jack to me. What matters is that she fix it.
An eye for an eye isn't equivalent exchange, because both the criminal and the victim lose something in the process. It's a net loss. That helps no one.
She took a life I valued, so now I must take hers? How about this: she took a life, so now I demand she go save the lives of others. That is equivalent exchange. Hell, that's an exchange in my favor. Make her do more good than she ever did evil. Make it so that no one else has to suffer the pain that she caused me. The damage she caused me is irreversible, and her death will not change that. But she can keep others from suffering the same fate.
If I take her life for the sake of my own vengeance, then the only person it serves is me. If I order her to save the lives of others, then she serves society on a whole. She makes the world a better place. And that's what matters.
There is no justice in vengeance. It's not practical, it's not constructive, it solves nobody's problems, and it most certainly doesn't fix what was broken. It's purely emotional, and there is only hollow emptiness at the end of that road.
Practicality.
Okay, I wanted to talk a bit about how the story treats Amy and Daph's roles and what I think is interesting there, but I can't get the words to work right now.
3342697
And I want to chime in on this discussion, because it's gotten to a pretty interesting (and maybe irreconcilable) point.
Morning Sun basically expresses a sentiment that I find is pretty common and unquestioned, and one that I'm not sure I can outright disagree with. The side of the debate there is essentially "The victim is always, intrinstically right."
There are a lot of people who will swear by that, and a lot of people who will instantly reject that, I think. Exploring the nuance of that is... sort of the most important thing we can do when dealing with Justice, though.
The complexity of that, beyond establishing clearly who are 'victims' and nothing else (which is not that hard in this case, but usually very difficult), is that there are... competing 'last goals' of Justice, I would say. As Ether Echoes outlined the main things punishment intends to achieve, there are also things that it seeks to avoid, namely, the further victimization of anyone. All too often we're thrust into situations where we either have to inflict terrible harm on someone, or declare the feelings of those already wronged invalid. Neither of those is good things! I don't think anyone really thinks they are, but it's easy to believe someone else does when they prioritize the one you don't.
Anyway, I don't really have a conclusion on which is better, but I'd like people to talk about it in direct terms more often. This specific case is kinda hard – by Ether's word, our major victims don't even have those feelings for retribution, anyway; but it can be hard to trust that because they're fictional. Ether's word as an author is already constructed to carry a moral code of its own, conscious or not, and in real life we don't get that luxury.
3342717
(Also, Swan, I'd really like to point out, as valid as your comments are, it feels like you're emotionally attacking your idea of what Morning Sun is trying to advocate, rather than what they're actually saying. You're using responses to sort of 'the opposite of your own position' more than anything else.)
3342314
I'm having a hard time not interpreting this as: "Look, all I want you to do is make the character older without actually making her older."
Also if she were four years older, Daphne would be four years older, and that would be a considerably different story indeed.
The issue with that, and we keep saying it and point it out, is that is demonstrably false. I'm sorry, but your anecdotal evidence does not mandate the mindset of every 8-year old girl on the planet.
3342879 I'm not arguing that there's no such thing as a genius-level 8-year-old, that the character as written cannot exist.
I'm saying that genius-level 8-year-olds are more unusual than merely-above-average 12-year-olds. And that I would have an easier time empathizing with a less-unusual character and an easier time suspending my disbelief that a less-unusual character happened to get mixed up in the situation she finds herself in.
I'm arguing that you could slot either one of those characters into Amelia's role (the "older without making the character older" thing you mention) but that one of those characters is harder for me as a reader to empathize with, so why not go with the other option? She was already acting older than an average 8-year-old so you'd barely need to change anything to bump her physical age bracket up a bit to match.
3342892
I'm not sure what part of a family that shares a single soul through their matrilineal line is realistic, I must admit.
3342289
You've posted a lot in this thread, and I feel like the discussions other people have had with you can pretty much cover anything I'd say on the subject.
There is however, your emotional response, which interests me considerably. The reason for that is because you perhaps understand Amelia better than 80% of the people here. You know, exactly how she feels. That feeling of disgust? That's all her through out the second and third acts. In fact, she gets that feeling about herself as soon as the CMC and Wire suffer for her behavior. Her threshold is even lower than yours when it comes to what is damage that can never be undone.
And you say that there is nothing that can be done about it, except that's not what she's told. With the power of the bridle, she can undo it. She can undo all the evil that happened as a result of her very early actions, as well as the hurt done to herself, to her older sister, to the other denizens of the nine worlds - all she has to do is use the bridle, inflict just a little bit more suffering, and then reverse all of it. What she is doing now doesn't matter because the perceived result of this behavior is the end of all that damage. She is trying to atone in a way that would satisfy you, and falls short because changing the past just isn't a good way to go about things.
By the end of the story she understands that you don't always get a perfect solution. Sometimes being a mature adult, and a good leader, means taking a terrible situation and managing it as best you can. It's on a truly epic scale, but this is a story about demigods and gods, echoing down from a time where everyone was such.
I don't expect this to change your opinion, gut emotional responses like this are pretty hard to alter. But at the very least I hope you understand the character, and appreciate that from the get go, she was trying to use the bridle to achieve the penance you're trying to imagine yourself.
I've been thinking about the first part. because I'm too dumb to debate Justice and Ethics with everyone else.
I think there's a lot of "wrong" ways to write child characters, usually by romanticizing them too much, but making a child intelligent is not! Abstract thought doesn't develop until a later age, and there's probably other things like emotional or social development and such that I don't know the details on. But logical reasoning IS present at that age. Why wouldn't a child be able to focus very heavily on that skill?
Amelia reminds me a bit of Roald Dahl's Matilda, heh.
Magical powers aside, their booksmarts may be extraordinary, but certainly not unrealistic or unbelievable. Readers who don't find that to be credible are.... well, they're naive. They're ignorant of how children work. I recall Ender's Game having similar critics and defenders on the topic of the children being "too smart" so this debate's been going on before.
When Mozart was Amelia's age, he already started composing symphonies! I learned basic algebra at 8 or 9, and had a rather advanced vocabulary. Amelia was still much smarter though. I don't find it unrealistic at all that she would have similar skills as I did, except developed further from her self-dependence. It's not even necessarily "genius" like Mozart's case could be argued, just that she focused a lot of time studying history and science.
now I'm also strongly reminded of the 1994 film Fresh and its 12 year old main character. He's smart and clever, forced to be self-dependent, and shaped by anger and bitterness into doing some horrible things. And similar to Amelia, he succeeds because everybody around him vastly underestimates him by his age. It's an amazing movie that I recommend, but I bring it up as another example where someone writes a child prodigy in a careful and realistic manner, and some people still don't believe it. "Truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction," I suppose.
3342897 Hrmph. This is a fandom where we accept without question a story featuring a rainbow-maned pegasus who can control weather and break the sound barrier, but erupt in cries of "that's not realistic! They wouldn't behave that way!" when her friends (a pegasus who makes dragons cry by glaring at them, a unicorn who's the protege of the Sun goddess, another unicorn who makes dresses for ponies, and a couple of "normal" ponies that can kick trees out of the ground or pull "party cannons" out of their manes) react poorly to her over-inflated ego and decide to puncture it without talking to her first.
Plausibility of characterization is far more important than plausibility of physics, biology, cosmology, or any of that other irrelevant fluff.
Oh, and just to be clear, I do like the story a great deal. I'm just picking at one of the few things I considered a minor flaw in it. Nothing's perfect. :)
3342717
I specifically said I was not advocating Eye for an Eye; the counterexample I gave was 'Bruise for an Eye', or in other words 'If someone stabs out an eye, and the victim wants to punch them in the face really hard, then yea, I'm cool with that'. The bruise will heal; the eye never will.
I really also feel you are talking past what I am saying, rather than addressing the substance of my arguments, which does not help.
3342770
To clarify, I don't think the victim is always right; for example, I would oppose 'They robbed me, they should be executed so I feel safe again'. I'm also opposed to the death penalty, yet 'They murdered my mother, I want them locked up for life' would be something I would consider during a sentencing hearing were I in a position to make that judgement call. It is not to say I would necessarily defer to the victim, but I do feel they deserve a say in whatever justice is meted out, and in this story the only one who has any say in that is Celestia, and it's clear other characters are not fine with that.
I like your point about 'The feelings of those already wronged' - that's a good way to put it. To me, those wronged are left hanging in our current resolution, and in that regard i find it intensely disturbing given the magnitude of what went on.
I'm also pulling 3342907 up here, because I think one thing that matters intensely to me I want to only state once - Part of the reason I react so viscerally to this is what Amelia does is basically the single worst thing I can conceive of to inflict on another living being. In many ways I feel it is worse than murder, and so her self-justification isn't really anything I can empathize with.
Moving onto Solana, yes, I get her goal is to rewind time, and yes, I get that she is arrogant enough to believe she can pull it off; had she actually succeeded in such, it is possible I wouldn't hate it so. I don't know, since it's a hypothetical.
But that feeling of disgust you cite? That rage? It's still not enough to justify what she does. To use a real-world example, there are certain people out there who I look at and go 'You are a horrible person; the world would be immensely better off without you' - yet it would still be wrong for me to go out and assassinate them, even if it would realize a net good. Amelia is walking the path of every would-be evil overlord who goes 'It's okay for me to enslave people now because I will bring Utopia'.
But it's worse because again her actions are purely selfish; she's not trying to bring Utopia. She's only trying to avoid facing her own guilt, and continually compounding it into something worse and worse and worse. And while I can understand -how- she goes about that, it still hits that point at the end where the music stops and everyone else is still left holding the bill.
Like, I look at it and go 'If someone were offering me that choice - to rewind time if only I committed the little crime now - well, I wouldn't do it.' Because it's more than just rewinding time, it's also her robbing everyone else of agency, of free will, of the ability to choose; it's as Leit Motif notes that her plan only ends in a clockwork universe where the only will is her own, and nobody else is free to make a mistake, to grow, to learn.
And for someone whose principle value is that of self-determination, she's effectively pressing every single button I have to make me loathe her for it.
Uhm. I hope that articulates it a bit better. It may be easier if I have direct questions to answer if there is anything you want to pick at further; all of these are kind of coming out as ramblings as I try to process a bunch of very complex feelings that have been eating at me ever since I read this story. It has, as I noted earlier, basically sat haunting my thoughts for months and occupies the very small niche of stories of 'In many ways, I wish I had never read this' because I cannot get over the emotional knot it is tied in me. Eventually i know I will process it, but after 6 months it is growing rather exhausting and its hard to justify the pain as 'worth it'.
3342892
what you say about empathy may be true. but is it required to empathize with Amelia?
Daphne and Leit are more likely for readers of these types of story to empathize with, as the misunderstood creative and abandoned loner. Amelia is less so, since few people are prodigies, though I don't think that's her only important trait. (Maybe I was almost a prodigy, but I still don't empathize with her that much because my life experiences were closer to Daphne's)
I can't empathize with Bat-Man, because my parents weren't murdered, but if he's well-written I can still sympathize with him and cheer him on.
and it seems a lot of readers lost sympathy with Amelia halfway through the novel, hence the whole debate about her punishment. If sympathy can land either way, I don't think empathy was required for this character. It's okay to like her at first, and stop when she acts unheroically.
anyway, I don't think this is really related to suspension of disbelief.
3342949
Yeah, hm. First off, I'm really sorry that you feel that way about reading something. Having supposedly 'needless' stress over something like a work of fiction is absolutely horrible, and while on some level I think it's a sign the work is emotionally resonant, it still sorta sucks.
From reading this sole comment, I mostly get the message that you, personally, hate Amelia. And that's pretty fine! It's a normal emotional reaction, I really can't blame you for that, no matter how much I adore her and her entire arc.
Looking back at what you've said before, you think she deserves worse than what happened to her. You want bad things to happen to her – or at least, less good things to happen to her. But you can't articulate what any of those things should be.
I'm going to be a bit presumptuous, and, I mean, I could be entirely off the mark, but I think a lot of your emotional turmoil stems from the fact that you hate Amy and want her to suffer, but you're a nice person and that's not a nice feeling to have. You know that her suffering further won't accomplish anything good for anyone, but you still want it to happen. You want to find a reasonable excuse for it, a way that it actually is a good thing instead of just your selfish desire... but you can't, and that's frustrating.
Does that sound right at all?
3342977
We've decided we're keeping you.
3342361
Senpai noticed me!
orig08.deviantart.net/1f51/f/2014/080/e/c/senpai_shark_by_officialflygon-d7b4aa6.png
I have strong feelings for the character, but hatred is not one of them, even if I had a slightly bleaker interpretation of the ending.
I have read Amelia's arc as a a tragedy. A true tragedy, where she takes the worst possible path, where we assist to this unable to intervene, knowing full well that she is making all the wrong choices, and where the wrongs she commits can never be truly righted through any kind of punishment.
And at the end, she is crushed by guilt, trying to amend without hope to find real salvation in those acts. The victims can never get true, satisfying justice that will repair the damage done to them, the perpetrator will not find peace, and those that have to pass judgement have to settle for what will be the thing that will bring the most good, as anything else will probably only bestow more suffering in one way or another, even if this means that some (maybe most) of those that have been damaged will feel cheated. And all this will hang on Amelia's head for the coming centuries, millennia or more, considering a few of the victims are immortals.
So, Amelia, a character which commits acts I profoundly despise, find in some cases more horrifying than murder, and which hit me emotionally (congratulations on that, you made me care a lot!) is a tragic figure, that lacked the ethical tools to manage the things that came her way, and so failed.
I don't think I have much to comment on whether or not Amelia got what was coming to her. Everyone else has that covered well and I honestly think that the fact that there's such profound disagreement means the story was better than if everyone could come to a consensus one way or the other.
The reason why Amelia's arc is my favorite part of my favorite fanfiction (I know I said I liked Hard Reset better that one time, but I'm a flip-flopper.) is because it gave me something that I didn't know I wanted, for the most part. I'm a sucker for a good redemption story, but let's face it, how many of them sugarcoat or diminish the main character's crimes so that the redemption can be more easily accepted by the audience? This story affected me so profoundly that it makes most other, similar stories seem shallower in comparison. It inspired me to incorporate such an arc into two other stories I'm planning, both with different variations and context from each other and Pirene.
I can't thank you enough for writing this story the way you did. I'm going to revisit that brainstorming thread and try and plan out some ideas I had there that I left by the wayside.
I think Amelia was an amazing character.
At first she seemed like the simple neglected younger sister, wanting to show she's better than Daphne, or at least more capable.
But as things get more 'real' she's forced to make hard choices, and the choice is between personal suffering or hurting others for personal gain, and, as a child, she isn't strong enough to choose her own suffering, which is ironic considering how much she want's to prove she's strong.
Eventually she hits a tipping point where, as you said, she can't ignore all the pain she's caused others, usually those who weren't even hurting her themselves but were convenient in helping her get past a given problem. She is causing innocents to suffer for her own gains, and the deeper the rabbit hole goes, the more mature she becomes intellectually, while still emotionally being a child.
Being able to understand the pain she is now causing while still being forced to make the choices which cost others, she is overcome by her emotional immaturity, succumbing to a misguided view that she's already gone to far and should just continue till she comes out the other side. She's not an immoral character, but rather a good character who isn't emotionally mature enough to be selfless, nd intelligent enough to understand and regret her mistakes as well as see the pattern of her deeds and where they will lead.
At the end, I think she subconsciously is trying to change herself, as the her that existed before all this began was selfish and childish enough to start making all these wrong decisions, so maybe a new her can stop making mistakes, or at the very least stop caring about the outcome.
3342977
I don't hate her, per se. I do hate what she did. I hate the reaction everyone else gives to it, in the end; I feel far too many treat her as a broken, tragic doll and don't properly react to just how horrible what she did truly is.
I feel that 'I have seen into your soul, and know you aren't going to do it again' comes across as a narratively cheap way to write off the necessity for further punishment. And, again, in many ways I feel that even if it would do nothing for -her-, punishing her would go a long way towards helping her victims heal. And, to me, that is a good that is more important than allowing her to begin healing.
That may be a good way to put it. At this point, if the choice was offered between 'Help Amy heal', or 'Help those she hurt heal', the second group wins out. But, at the end, we do not get that; nobody she has victimized is shown as getting solace. Mostly, we see them trying to offer her absolution. We see Luna, whose sister has been soul-raped, only going 'I don't know if I can forgive you yet, but you will heal'; we see Celestia simply welcoming her into the fold; we see Rainbow not being asked 'How can I help you', but rather 'Can you ever forgive her?'
Everything in that epilogue is about 'How can we help Amy heal?', and move on, and so forth. We're seeing everyone forgive the bully, and try to help them, and instead of focusing on supporting her victims they ask said victims to help -her-. It's backwards. It's a miscarriage of justice, in that regard. You don't ask a trauma survivor 'Can you forgive the one that tormented you?' immediately after they have emerged from that torment.
Amy is painted at the end as a good person who made a lot of bad choices. She isn't.
I don't want bad things to happen to her. I am simply repelled by the fact that the story has everyone turning around and supporting her, to the point they are asking those she destroyed to join in. We see Daphne, and Marcus, and Naomi all looking at her and simply forgiving her right out. We see them banding around her, trying to urge others to aid her. Nevermind all she has wrought, all the ruin in her wake.
That, in part, is what eats at me. We see the one least deserving of support being given the most of it. The horror she has wrought is glossed over. We don't see the agony, the despair, the pain of those who were torn from tranquility and bent to her will or simply scattered in her wake.
At the end of the story, I do not believe anyone should be feeling sorry for Amelia. Understanding of why she did what she did, perhaps. But she should be regarded the way we would regard a murderer expressing remorse for their actions - yes, it is good they show remorse. Yes, there may come a time we can forgive them. But they haven't come close to reaching that moment yet. And here, all of that is cast away because Celestia says 'It won't happen again'.
And that does not feel authentic.
Wow, it's been forever since I last touched this story. Oh yeah, I hated Amelia for what I can remember she did. Lost all empathy when she decided to ditch her friends and leave them for dead (or worse). Worst part was when she started compelling characters, who lost all free will, and were unable to fight back in any way. Punishing her more won't help anything, but making a character avatar punch her would just make me feel a little better, however petty that is.
My interpretation of why the redemption rings hollow at this point is because, yes, she's gotten more responsibility and made a vow to spend the rest of her life making up for it... and that's it. I think it would go well better if we got to see how this actually translates into her daily life from then on. Seeing characters shift nervously away from her and her reputation; hateful glares from those that she's wronged; seeing the reactions of fear and betrayal from those that she abandoned. These type of things, if shown in another story rather than imagined by the readers, would I at least reduce the amount of annoyance I have for her. As you stated in the post, there's plenty of characters who have that feeling for her.
I know she's sorry for what she's done, and I guess I'm just waiting to see what she does with that. Promises are one thing, action and reaction is another.
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Oh wow.
So I've only had about six hours of sleep in the last 48 hours, but I can't let that lie, statements like these demand a response.
Your judgments regarding her don't follow from this statement. It also outright contradicts some of the things you've said in relation to her. But I guess when you're trying to strike out from a position of impartial justice, it helps to claim moral purity in advance.
Yeah, see, that's not how this works. This isn't ancient Babylon, and we don't chop off people's hands when they shoplift to reflect some kind of cosmic scale system that needs to be balanced. Yes, we have therapy for victims, and if someone steals from you we try to return the goods to the given individual. This isn't because it's going to make you feel better. The purpose of the justice system is to keep society working, because society is comprised of millions of imperfect individuals.
More to the point, psychologically speaking, hurting others so you can feel better is not healing. It is not therapeutic, and it does not resolve things in any long term meaningful fashion. The purpose of the justice system is not to enable Hatfield and McCoy shenanigans.
So, to use an extreme example, it's not okay to kill someone. No, not even if it makes you feel better. By that measure, it's also not okay to torture someone, or steal their agency, or whatever horrible punishment you would bestow were your imagination limitless.
Mmm... Bullshit, we don't get that at all.
Instead what we get is Luna wanting to basically turn her into a smoldering pile of carbon, but she reins herself in because she recognizes that believing she has the right to make that kind of judgment would be a gross hypocrisy - she's grown from her past behavior and become more mature because of it. She understands that killing or punishing Amelia accomplishes nothing, society can be benefited far more from her continued involvement rather than locking her up in Tartarus. You get locked up in Tartarus when you can't be contained any other way, and when there is slim to no opportunity you will do anything but derail an entire civilization.
As for Rainbow Dash? Yeah, that didn't happen. What actually happens is Daphne approaches her, and before Daphne can say anything, Rainbow Dash says:
To which Daphne responds:
This is not "HEY YOU! You need to forgive the person who hurt you because that's just!"
This is someone trying to help someone who got hurt, because that's Daphne's job at this point, and then asking if she thinks she will ever heal. Daphne wants to know what needs to happen before Rainbow Dash can get better. Rainbow Dash grudgingly responds that she'd have to change considerably, for Dash to get over it, Amelia would basically have to be a different person to the point of be unrecognizable. Then she says: "I don’t know how somepony can make up for that, though.”
And you know what? That entire mindset is presented as okay. It is understandable for a victim to feel that way.
People who forgive Amelia: Celestia, maybe some of the mane six?
People who don't forgive Amelia: Rainbow Dash, Princess Luna, Marble Stone, the entire Sword court, numerous goblins, numerous ponies, etc etc.
People who were never 'victims' of her and who never needed to forgive her in the first place: Daphne, Marcus, Naomi.
And again, no one asked Rainbow Dash or the like to forgive her for the greater good.
But you don't hate Amy the person, you just hate the things she did, right?
Directly contradicts your entire message.
No, not never mind. It is because of that damage they are interested in ending the chapter of tragedy. Right now there are hundreds of monsters roaming the countryside and honestly, after the bridle is vanished Amelia is the least of their problems. Again, Daphne and the others never even set out with a mission of punishment. She wanted to rescue her baby sister, and now she has.
Except not really, because the Amelia she knew is basically gone forever, drowned out in a sea of Celestia's memories, and the issues that come with maturing physically as quickly as she did. Again, people don't immediately forgive. You do realize that it's possible to accept that someone did something without condoning or condemning, right? The less mature individuals like Rainbow Dash want nothing to do with her, and that's fine. The older individuals like Celestia and Luna are thousands of years old, and they have all the tools they need to deal with this. Celestia has the dubious satisfaction of knowing that Amelia, the little girl who bridled her in the first place, is gone. That person got drowned out pretty thoroughly by thousands of years of sacrifice, compassion, and honed leadership.
I'm really not sure why you feel the horror was glossed over, it's recalled again and again, painted on the faces of everyone who experienced it. Indeed, Pirene spends more time agonizing over it than most novels tailored exclusively for adults.
What I'd like to know is why you think Amelia, a child without the faculties needed to decide whether or not smoking is a worthwhile sacrifice, is less deserving of sympathy and support than anyone else.
Consider you know, the Morgwyn. Why don't you ever mention Morgan? She's given far more support than many would think she deserves. Is it because she is actually punished? In her case the sanctions placed on her are necessary to make sure she doesn't opt out of her real punishment, which is to live and experience the world she helped to create.
If you actually understood the situation, you can't help but feel sorry for her, unless you're some kind of a sociopath. This is a story about a little girl who gets abused and manipulated by a primordial demon, who is trying to break the world and stole her big sister's legacy. What the Morgwyn did to Amelia is no less rape than what Amelia did to Celestia, yet this is a facet of the situation you've chosen to ignore.
In a world where authentic means it needs to appeal to your shallow emotional reaction, sure.
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These feel contradictory. In one you distance her actions from her character, and in the other you criticize others for doing that. (I'm a lot more comfortable with the latter, for what little it matters. The sentiment that, like, "The only real parts of you are the parts I like" is incredibly disturbing.)
Anyway, okay, yeah. You're bothered by Amy's victims having a reaction different from you would have. This is pretty fair. As I said before, they are fictional characters, and not even ones the spotlight was on, so it's entirely possible they weren't portrayed with the integrity they deserve.
—I'd talk a bit more about evaluating those reactions and seeing if you can find them genuine at all, but I apparently have something else to respond to now.
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Trying to prove your intepretation of the work – even if you have the benefit of actual, authorial intent – won't help here. This is a pretty myopic perspective: Yes, it's incredibly clear to us that Amy is a victim in this, but that is because this is her story. That makes it pretty easy to – accidentally – portray her as the only victim, and downplay everyone else who was affected. Analyzing this is really important, and calling someone who is trying to offer perspective there outright wrong, seems, uh, not good.
I find your comment on "shallow emotional reaction"s in pretty bad taste, too. Considering that, well, almost everything in the world is driven by those shallow emotional reactions, and in a real sense Pirene was a story about the tragedies that can result from those emotional reactions being able to overpower your reason and other judgement, it's really important to understand and come to terms with them, rather than just dismiss them.
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Oh, sweet! Is this one of those Royal We things, or should I be noting down multiple owners here?
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There are two points to my post, the first and most critical one is that their idea of justice and ethics needs some serious work - I don't feel conflicted in the least challenging that.
As for the instances where I argued about 'interpretation', this isn't that in the least. I'm not using hidden authorial knowledge here, I'm quoting directly from the story. They state such and such happened when that is demonstrably false. It would be exactly the same if he had said that Marcus and Naomi used to date, and their mixed up chemistry is the backbone of their relationship through out the story.
This is demonstrably false, because I can quote the pages from the actual story that state he dated Daphne, not Naomi. Do you see what I am saying here? This is not open to interpretation unless you do not know what words mean.
At no point in my criticisms did I present her as the only victim, I don't even know where this is coming from. In actuality, Morning Sun is claiming everyone else is a victim and Amelia isn't, so... now who's being myopic?
Yeah, but just as there is shallow rationalizations, there is also shallow emotional conclusions. I'm one of the biggest supporters regarding the importance of emotions and emotional intelligence you'll ever meet, and argue with Ether about it constantly. That doesn't make the response of 'this hurt me so now I make you hurt' any less shallow. It's absolutely dismissive of the emotion itself, seeks to end the issues prematurely, and doesn't explore what's really going on in even a passing manner. Morning Sun's entire post was incredibly backwards, and I'm sorry you have an issue with me being so mean as to point that out.
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Amelia as a tragic character in a tragic story was very intentional, aye.
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It's multiple!
So I'm not sure what you're saying exactly, Exuno, but Solana's not talking out of her ass, nor is she divining (nor receiving) authorial intent. She's backing it up with a direct reading of the epilogue. She never portrayed Amelia as the only victim, and the story sure as hell does not. More on that as I go on.
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So, Morning Sun. I agree with Solana on all points. Your comment about how you think others treat her is clearly wrong, and I reread my own chapters to refresh on this point. A reading of the material does not support your assertion. There's a few other bits I'd like to address.
I'm not trying to be rude here, but thems the breaks. You can't pick and choose elements of the story. The element of the Bridle being a two-way street was not developed to absolve Amelia, it was a consequence I decided on long before. The later consequence of it allowing Celestia to know her heart and thus be able to judge her objectively emerged from that. Frankly, I didn't need it to lessen her punishment, either - Daphne, holders of the Ring, and holders of the Cup can all effectively assess the truth of someone's inner self. Celestia would have had the wisdom to weight their narratives and most certainly would have come to the same conclusion.
You could say "Well, it's cheap, because in the real world we don't get to know what's going on in someone's head." Yes, but in the real world, the Bridle and the Morgwyn don't exist, so she'd never have had any ability to commit the crime in the first place. If it hadn't of been for supernatural intervention, Amelia Ocean would have grown up, overcome her bitterness with the love of family (and therapy), and become a successful lawyer or businesswoman. Supernatural intervention was useful in giving people like Celestia a better view of the situation, but not necessary.
Regarding your comments about the reactions of various people, I don't have a great deal to add to what Solana said. I could add to it by breaking down what every character is feeling, what is going on in their thoughts, why they do what they do, because I am not unaware of these issues. I put a great deal of thought into every character as they went through this trial. I feel the work speaks for itself, though, and see no reason to meddle in this with authorial intent.
Here is what I ultimately think about your arguments:
You are unable to meaningfully articulate any benefit to the victims through retribution.
Forget about the net cost of punishing her more severely - its effects on the opportunity cost of her acting freely in her own redemption - you can't seriously believe that there is any benefit at all to what you are proposing. It seems as if you are belaboring under the notion that punishing her would in some way alleviate the suffering of the victims or help them heal, but you don't seem to know how, and I would argue quite seriously that you cannot. Consider the two most serious victims, Celestia and Rainbow Dash. Do you really think, in any reading of these characters, that either of them would derive substantial, lasting benefit from making someone else needlessly suffer? Rainbow Dash may want to punch her, but that won't really make her feel better. Lasting healing will come only through friends, family, and their own fortitude.
I have absolutely no qualms in saying right now that the idea of punishing a criminal more severely solely to satisfy the need for vengeance in the victims is not only useless, but it is both wrong and immoral. The theory of retributive justice has been objectively and conclusively demolished over and over again. There is no benefit to society, victims, or the state in practicing vengeance. That many judges around the world still cling to this archaic form of jurisprudence is a sign more of politics and bad theories than anything. The ponies of Equestria, for all the faults they have, are almost certainly better than that, and Celestia definitely is. I'd remind you that Discord gleefully tortured an entire planet in a nightmarish hell from which none could escape, but she decided that, once the opportunity to reform him presented itself, bringing him over to her side was far more important than continuing to freeze him. In my view, what Discord did was far, far worse, because at least Amy backed off before she robbed the world of its agency and sanity. Hurting a couple people very badly is far and away less morally wrong than that.
There is one last thing I'd add, and that's the fact that Amelia is a child. Still is, in some corner of her being. She was a child abused by the world, and she lashed out. Try her as an adult if you like, but that has to be considered. Amelia may not be the only victim, but saying that she isn't a victim borders on ridiculous.
She was beset on all sides, lost and alone. She didn't know who to trust most of the time, and her trauma made it hard to trust the ones she could. That you have no sympathy for someone in that position, that folks expect her to react perfectly to her situation, is unbelievably myopic.
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I'm perhaps more liberal with the term 'intepretation' than most – I accept that many of Morning Sun's assertations are factually wrong and not grounded in the material itself, but because of that, and because I think their ideals of justice are harmful even in that scenario, I want to engage the discussion on those terms.
My objections to your arguments are that, well... you seem to be trying to prove that Morning Sun has a bad system of ethics by demonstrating they didn't do a thorough reading of the work, and have an imperfect memory. That doesn't follow. Sure, it may win you the debate club going on here, but it doesn't actually change MS' feelings at all.
The actual question here, if we care about discussing our ideal of Justice at all, is: "Assuming Morning Sun is objectively correct about everything that happened, should there have been worse consequences for Amelia?" Since I believe that both of you – and I know that myself – would still say no, I think there's room to explore where that difference of opinion is coming from. I think that's the only way that Morning Sun will actually get any emotional closure, rather than just feel like they're talking to people having an entirely different discussion.
The issue is that... no one really thinks like this. That's essentially the emotion at play, sure, but it comes it in a lot of more reasonable sounding forms, and it can be hard to recognize if you're not explicitly looking for it. You're making a mistake in assuming that everyone is as emotionally mature and self-aware as you, and these things should be incredibly obvious, but a lot of the time they're not. (That's kind of incredibly condescending, but...)
(Also, Morning Sun, my sincerest apologies for... basically all of the talking about you in third person.)
((Also, Solana, Ether, I'm deeply enjoying this and I hope you both are too. I don't get to have discussions on this level often, and it's very, uh, fulfilling.))
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When I was contesting their idea of justice, specifically, I explained why that is morally bankrupt. When I was contesting their understanding of the work, specifically, I provided examples where what they said happened is contrary to what is written.
And I acknowledged this, and still claimed their notion of how things should happen is not morally sound. I then moved on to the other issues I took offense to in their post, because sometimes a conversation can have more than one argument running at a time, and most arguments have more than one point to make.
There are plenty of people who literally think that, I've grown up with them. They take a latent idea and make it a conscious ideology. Morning Sun didn't do much better.
And as for someone being allegedly less mature and self-aware over all, I don't think that's my call to make. I've never even met Morning Sun before, but I think I know a shallow emotion when I spot it, and if I don't call it out it doesn't seem likely to me that they will become aware of how or why it's shallow when they have not already done so.
I appreciate it, too. It's a nice change of pace from listening to children lie about how they were scammed out of their digital items, and would now like a laundry list of free ones.
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I'm demonstrating he has a bad system of ethics by demonstrating the inherent flaws in his philosophy. That's quite a bit different.
That is quite true, and I basically agree.
And yes, I'm enjoying this as well.