I guess I can't write about Spike anymore. · 7:55pm Nov 15th, 2015
But I will because I'm a dick.
Had this odd exchange right after I published Beneath your feet, what Treasures. Someone messaged me bemoaning how badly Spike was treated in the series, that he was exploited and abused by the Mane Six, especially Twilight. I replied along the lines of "cheer up, it's not so bad," pointing out that while Spike was shown having his bad days and was often the butt of jokes, the rest of the Mane Six didn't escape this treatment either. But he's also shown being kind, clever, courageous and even righteous (as with the phoenix egg), and got his own episodes from time to time. It was, I concluded, pretty generous treatment for a sidekick.
The response I got surprised me. It was bitter and angry, something along the lines of "I see you've drunk the Kool-Aid too." I didn't reply--there's no percentage in engaging random weirdos on the Intarnets--but it made me wonder why someone could be so fiercely wrapped up in the idea of Spike as an exploited and abused figure.
And then I started to consider my own perspective on Spike.
I see Spike as Twilight's adopted little brother. Yes, I know Twilight pretty much raised him, but it's not unknown for kids to be raised by elder siblings (Apple Bloom, anyone?). The two may not formally or even consciously acknowledge their relationship as such, but that's the way the writers seem to handle it, and it works.
And I see the relationship as good and healthy. It's not perfect, because neither of them is perfect (imperfections drive character development). But they live together agreeably enough and look after each other dutifully, affectionately, kindly--a word meaning "like kin," like family. Sure I see the squabbles, accidents and other misadventures, but good families have those: I also see the affection, care and labor that good families have too.
But then, I know what a good family looks like. I have one. Not everybody does.
My family's not perfect either, and its imperfections are nowhere near as mild as those in Twilight's (which, after all, must not be too harsh or complex for young children to grasp). But it's still a good family. I didn't and don't always like them. But I see how I turned out, how we all turned out, and that is: not badly at all. That's how I know my family is good. And I can compare Twilight's family to mine and see the similarities in things both good and bad. That's how I know Twilight and Spike are family, and that their family's good.
Now: what if somebody doesn't know what a good family looks like?
What if, say, your mom was a bipolar alcoholic and you were an only child (as was the case with a friend of mine)? What would you see in Twilight and Spike's relationship? You wouldn't have your own sibling relationship to compare it to, and the only female relative you'd have to measure Twilight against was someone who was irrational, arbitrary, and abusive. What, in that case, would seem more real to you: the good kind caring stuff Twilight does, or the stuff that's thoughtless and demanding? Because Twilight can be thoughtless and demanding, especially when she's in the midst of some personal project.
Would you see these things as flaws in her character, or as her character? Would you see Spike's endurance of them as brotherly forbearance, or searing injustice?
There's a genre of stories--I haven't read any but I've seen them discussed--- in which Spike either goes off and leaves the Mane Six, or turns on them and kills them. In either case it's presented as a valedictory act, an act of liberation and retribution. I guess this is how people like the ones I've postulated, like the one who messaged me, work through their issues about their families. I admit I'm a little horrified to think of the characters being used this way. But then I've never turned off my "mature" filter so I'm sure I have no idea.
So what does this have to do with how I write about Spike?
Well, it's a basic principle of civilized behavior that you never talk about your good fortune in front of the less fortunate--don't flaunt your wealth, don't eat in front of others, don't brag. This is the source of "check your privilege" which is not all wrong.
The thing that's problematic is that on the Internet--which is everywhere and everything nowadays, with the advent of smartphones and social media--you are always in front of the less fortunate. So any time you speak of some unearned advantage--like, say, a good family--anyone who doesn't have it can speak up and demand a tithe of deference from you. And you have to offer it, with a sufficiently penitential air.
Most people won't do this. But if your audience is big enough someone will, and when they do others will join in. It's basic primate behavior: if enough of us get together, we can take that higher-status monkey down a peg or two! Which of course increases the lower apes' status, as well as reducing the risk to them from the higher.
So if I want to be good, if I want to be nice, I'll shut up about Spike. Because projecting my own family experience onto him is a way of advertising my privilege of having a family at all, let alone a good one.
But I won't shut up. So I suppose I shall be wicked.
Not to rub peoples' noses in it, of course, but I'll keep writing Spike as Twilight's devoted if occasionally mischievous little brother. I'll keep writing Twilight as Spike's loving if occasionally oblivious older sister. I will continue to write them as a good family--not a perfect family, not always even a happy family--because that's my experience of family. And that's how I deal with the issues I have with my family.
Chief among which is that I should have appreciated it more, and earlier.
Well said.
Yeah... fuck the bucket crabs!
I didn't have the greatest family. They certainly weren't bad enough to justify any complaining, but it was unpleasant enough I don't feel anything more (some) obligation to them, out my own good nature.
I read a lot of fanfiction here, and one thing I'll always notice is how so often I see characters being altruistic in a way I'd never write (or even imagine) them, like in Hard Reset 2, where Twilight decides every instances of her loved ones matter and she should stop being utilitarian and treating prefinal instances of her loved ones as means to an end, or Of the Hive where quite a few characters obviously love Twilight and she obviously loves them back.
If I had been in their shoes I might have written something a lot edgier, which is one of the many reasons I'll never seriously consider (publishing) any fiction, except maybe a short story or two about something abstract.
But I digress. Don't stop doing what you do man, even though I tend to cringe every time a character isn't unrealistically stoic or edgy, I do like reading about and imagining families one could actually have strong feelings for: it's what escapism is about
Interesting.
I dislike Rarity for the way she treats Spike. I think she treats him as a toy rather than a person. She loves having a dragonling man-servant who will wait on her hand and foot; all she has to do is refrain from telling him the truth (which is "You're sweet, but I will never love you because I want an upper-class unicorn"). I know Rarity has positive character traits, but IMO they don't make up for this years-long trend of emotional dishonesty and callous romantic manipulation.
I think I'm emotionally well-adjusted. After reading the above, would you say I have unresolved girl issues?
Bonus question: If so, does that make my critique less valid/relevant?
I concur we need more people like you when it comes to this sort of thing
We walk a narrow line on the Internet between expression and the avoidance of offense. It is so narrow, in fact, that it does not literally exist; it is of a negative width. There is no perfectly safe utterance you can make. The best we can do is find a happy medium. The thing is, it takes two people to create offense: a producer of content/information and a receiver who reacts badly to said content/information. In recent years, there seems to have been an upsurge in the idea that it is solely the responsibility of the producer to avoid offense, that the receiver has no responsibility to avoid, process, or even admit their own role in the offense process. Somewhere along the way, "trigger warning" turned from "give ample warning before showing graphic depictions of problematic topics so that genuine sufferers of post-traumatic stress can know to avoid it" into "never show me anything that makes me feel bad and also read my mind first."
Case in point: last year, over on "Skin Horse," my co-creator Shaenon had a baby, and I thought it would be sweet to show everyone the reason they were suffering through a couple months of me running the strip all by myself. So I posted a picture of little Robin. Most comments were predictably happy and congratulatory, but we got at least one commenter who got seriously torqued at the idea that we hadn't warned him or her sufficiently in advance that we were going to post a picture of a baby because he or she hates babies. And I'm not going to be like "Who could hate a baby?!?" because I get it: there are things in people's brains that are different than mine, and they're going to react with fear and borderline horror at things that I find completely innocuous. But there is a point when you must say to yourself, "I have an issue that it is at least partially my own responsibility to deal with" instead of presuming that everyone else in the world has the responsibility of never making you have a bad feeling and lashing out at them for failing to execute that responsibility. The existence of something in the world that makes you feel bad does not map 1:1 to direct personal victimization, and sometimes I feel we're losing grip on that. And no, I'm not just demonizing Tumblr and the American Left, because the exact same psychology that drives the much-maligned (and increasingly fictional) "Social Justice Warrior" drove the people who thought the Defense of Marriage Act was a pretty good idea.
All that said, we must have sympathy and compassion for our fellow man. Far more harm has been perpetrated in the world through a lack of understanding and compassion than has ever been done by too much understanding and compassion. I mean, you have no proof that your correspondent was dealing with issues, but the fact that you at least recognized the possibility is shamefully moral thought, by which I mean, I am ashamed that I would not have gone so far.
And yes, maybe there is less difference between "checking one's privilege" and "counting one's blessings" than we think.
Thank you for the post.
3544364
I can't actually speak for the OP, but just for the sake of conversation: there's a world of difference between saying "I disagree; I believe that Spike is routinely victimized by Rarity" and "I see you've drunk the Kool-Aid too." TJME seems to be compassionately positing that people who react with anger may be working through some issues rather than saying that everyone who disagrees with his opinions must perforce be working through some issues. The fact that you present a cogent, articulate standpoint in a respectful manner means, right out of the gate, that you're not the topic of this post.
3544364
I dunno. Do you?
I could speculate--you seem to want me to speculate--but since you're right here it seems simpler and more polite just to ask.
Bonus answer: that's not how I score the game.
Good on you for now bowing to the whims of the masses. There are few things more loathsome and destructive in this modern world than the tyranny of political correctness.
...
And I suddenly realize that this is a topic of political correctness centered around two individuals being perfectly happy siblings. Without the full context as you've offered it, it seems downright silly. Even with it, really.
3544329
....
--!
I am reminded of Sweetie Belle's behavior in Sisterhooves Social. She's hanging out at the Apple farm, and Applebloom accidentally splashes grape juice all over Applejack. Applejack seems about to lose her temper, and Sweetie Belle panics. She immediately assumes that Applejack and Applebloom will get into a viscous fight, because that's been her own personal experience with Rarity. She turns out to be mistaken, of course: Applejack laughs it off. This is one of the reasons it's my second favorite episode: Rarity is shown to be wrong, and realizes the consequences of her actions. And just look at Sweetie Belle when she finally shouts that she doesn't want a sister anymore. She's not vindictive or righteous. You can see tears in her eyes. There are no villains in this episode: it's just an unfortunate situation that's been simmering for years now, and finally needs to be resolved.
My main problem with Spike is that he's often portrayed as a mixture between a little brother, an adopted son, a valuable employee, and a talking pet. That last one comes up only very occasionally, but it clashes so hard with the rest of his characterization that it throws me completely off kilter. Every time I see him, I wonder if he's a pet. For goodness sake, Spike even becomes a dog, leash and all, when he appears in Equestria Girls. All I could do was cringe.
My secret conspiracy theory is even worse than this: In a cartoon where the protagonists are highly competent little girls, Spike is the Incompetent But Well-Intentioned Boy. A very special flavor of sexist sidekick, and a reversal of roles you don't see very often... outside of 80's cartoons for little girls, where it is the norm. Silly boys! I'm probably reading way too much into this, since all of the other characters are also portrayed as being Incompetent But Well-Intentioned at some point or another. Everyone makes mistakes. Even Celestia herself finally got into a teeny-tiny hissy fit with Luna in episode 100. It's her first personality flaw. I'm surprised it happened on-screen.
...I said viscous instead of vicious, didn't I? In my defense, they were both covered in grape juice.
...He's a writer. If he hasn't pissed somebody off, he's not doing his job properly.
The funny thing is, you could treat Spike's poor treatment as a Racism problem, or a cultural minority problem, or anything else. Personally, I always thought of it as a "Sexism" problem. He's not merely an incompetent and easily abused sidekick: he's an incompetent and easily abused token boy.
But that's probably just me. I am seriously curious to know if there's a kind of relationship in the MLP universe that equates to "beloved animal companion who you treat like family." They could have some sort of relationship that we as humans have no analogue for, and can't fully translate.
3544444
Thing is, the guy didn't come off as being PC. He didn't use that faction's cant. But he had the attitude: like he wanted something from me in exchange for not abusing me.
I only realized that's what he wanted when I didn't give it to him, and he got mad.
I thought the analogy was a common one:
One crab can easily climb out of a bucket. But if the bucket is full of crabs, any individual trying to escape will be pulled back down by the others. Bucket crabs.
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3544457
I need to point out here that nobody has said or implied that I shouldn't write Spike the way I do. I just had that one weird response and it started me thinking about my own life, and my friends' lives, and the rather gloomy things I read in the news about the twin decays of the family and of free public discourse, and I wrote those things down.
Again, nobody has condemned me for writing approvingly of good families. It seems that things are heading that way and it makes me sad. But I'm a lot sadder about the very present fact that fewer and fewer people these days understand what it's like to grow up in homes with two loving, capable parents, let alone decent schools, and safe streets.
I feel like a sage grouse, like my kind is going extinct through habitat destruction.
But I feel worse for the folks who never got to have a good childhood and now never will, because it's too late. You can't fix their problem short of turning back time and giving them different parents, which would basically mean erasing the people that they are.
There are a lot of them in the fandom it seems, and the one hopeful thing I've noticed is that only a tiny minority turn out bitter and vindictive. The rest still seem to be trying to create good family lives, at least in what they read and write, and I hope that that might translate into success doing the same in real life.
3544468
But the Ubermollusk can weld them into an unstoppable army with a single will--his own:
img1.etsystatic.com/051/0/9135377/il_570xN.731164077_efjd.jpg
3544497
Maybe that's the problem with my response... I've had a wonderful, stable, loving family all my life.
I suppose I worry I won't be able to write a dysfunctional family in my own stories, without it sounding contrived or clichéd... the best writing comes from experience. Does that mean that all my characters have to be peachy keen forever? I hope not.
To expand on what I think 3544468 is saying, I'm going to quote Marianne Williamson:
Non-theists, feel free to substitute "the universe" or whatever you like for "God" in this quotation.
3544430
As I said, I think I'm okay; the reason I bring it up is that I feel like I'm the only one who feels this way about Spike and Rarity. Everybody else seems to think their relationship is cute. When I look at the same data as everyone else but I draw a unique conclusion, I have to ask myself if I might be missing something. Am I crazy?
(I didn't know what to make of your bonus answer, but I think 3544417 helped me figure it out. Thank you for writing that, Skywriter!)
3544520
Point taken. I guess that's where the analogy breaks down... hopefully.
3544525
It is apparent through your response that you view the world through a very specific lens, one which won't be lifted no matter what I say. As such, debating the topic is pointless; you're going to have a very strong opinion based upon how you see the world, and no amount of logic or ideas or lengthy declarations will change that. Anything I say will likely be countered by you telling me that my sources are bad, my intentions are evil, and/or I'm just an idiot who drank the Kool-Aid.
As such, this is the only response I will give to the query, no matter how eager I might be to pursue the proper debate I likely won't find. Besides, I don't want to turn TheJediMasterEd's blog into ten pages of vitriol and argument.
Political correctness has nothing to do with xenophobia. Xenophobia is about being fearful or hateful of outsiders and people 'not like you.' The actual number of people out there who suffer from this are minute. You might think half of the general populace is hateful of outsiders, but in reality you only think this because the PC gangs are out highlighting every fleeting instance of it, and many more instances where it is not, but they claim it is. This is the point where you point out daily news reports and tell me I'm blind, at which point I note how you only know these things exist because the media goes out of their way to find them.
There was a time when PC was about being kind and conciliatory to others. Those days are long behind us. Now, PC is a weapon to be wielded. The people who hold the PC club insist that they are the most tolerant, loving, kindest people in the world. They fail to add the caveat: you must agree with everything they say. When that doesn't happen, they become the most vicious, spiteful, hateful individuals you'll ever meet. They scream their faux offense to the world and demand I change my opinion, my way of life, my very culture to meet their petty demands.
Why should I? Because a hundred people don't approve of what I have to say and managed to get a few friends with really loud speakerphones? Being obnoxious does not make you right or righteous. You'll always find two or three outspoken individuals who claim to be offended for the whole, perfectly happy to ignore how the rest of the group don't care or are even laughing at the tomfoolery. But somehow, these are the people that we listen to. Ignore the fact that six weeks later nobody will care about the topic anymore; for those six weeks, they had the spotlight and could ram through whatever new rules they wanted, and get away with it Scott-free because 'they're the victims.'
Victims of what? Of a single person saying something dumb in a moment of weakness? There is not a single person in history – not a one – who hasn't made some bad comment out of anger or ignorance, or who did something they later realized was foolish. You cannot look me in the eye and say with any level of honesty that you haven't put your foot in your mouth at some point in your life. People make mistakes. In the past, an apology was made and everyone laughed it off the next day. Nowadays, jobs are lost, careers are ended, entire lives are destroyed because of a slip of the tongue, sometimes made decades ago.
And somehow, this has become okay.
Am I saying there are no people out there who truly hate others? No, I'm not. But what happens whenever we find those people? The entire country converges on them in a mass lynching. How in the world could all the things the PC crowd insists are mainstream be so when virtually everyone attacks these people? This is the part where you tell me that they're just covering for their own issues. If that's the case, why aren't we finding more of them, especially considering how almost every little thing everyone says is monitored and recorded and fed out to the ever-watchful world in seconds? Well, there's a vast right-wing conspiracy protecting them! At which point I ask if you believe people like Rush Limbaugh who talk about vast left-wing conspiracies. And you don't, so why should you expect me to believe in the opposite?
The real issue isn't that people aren't bad, it's that we've begun taking even the most innocent slip ups to mean they are bad. Sometimes a person will say something in jest – a completely harmless statement that may have been in poor taste – and they will be treated as if they single-handedly masterminded the Holocaust. Is this supposed to be kind and caring and tolerant? Is this supposed to be understanding? Is this supposed to make the world a better place? It's not going to ease the hearts and minds of the PC crowd, because as soon as the hubbub dies down, they're out on the prowl, looking for the next mistake they can capture and put in highlights all over the web and – if they're lucky – use to get whatever they want. And when they get what they want, they still won't be happy, because there's going to be something else that needs 'fixing.'
Because it's not about being right or wrong.
It's about making sure everyone agrees with them, no matter what the topic is.
So the next time you say something stupid – and we all do – imagine what it would be like if your life was destroyed because of it. Imagine if you made an offhand commend that might, with a little imagination, insinuate that your wife has gained some weight, and the next day you're signing divorce papers and losing your house with her dad's gun to your head. Welcome to the modern age of political correctness: think like we do and abandon your intellectual and cultural freedoms, or kiss your life goodbye. We'll take your most innocent and innocuous comments to misconstrue, misrepresent, take out of context and at times downright edit the very words to make sure you turn to our way of thinking. But don't worry...
We're doing it for the good of society.
I appreciated my family a lot growing up, but I appreciated it even more when I got to know my wife's family and gained some other worldly experience.
Great points. Thanks for the blog post.
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*whisper* Hail Humboldt.
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As an outsider to this discussion, and actually completely independent of the topic being discussed, it is poor debate form to commence a comprehensive discussion response by (a) portraying your co-discussor as an intransigent who is completely unwilling to budge his position, (b) claiming that your co-discussor's point of view is based in opinion based on a worldview incompatible with your competing logic (as though there cannot exist logic supporting both views) and (c) implying that all your points will be immediately ignored, which is kind of like (a).
And now, watch me not become an outsider to this discussion!
The thing is, I don't think these viewpoints are all that contradictory. Both positions being discussed here boil down to the same thing: the nut here is "Us vs. Them." "We are not like you." Xenophobia, as here described, is peering out from the fortress of your own society at the great difference outside it, fearing it, and directing that fear outward into hate; but there's another sort of xenophobia, the type that peers into your own society, directing fear and hate at the foreign and threatening elements within it. The Internet, progressive bastion that it tends to be, seems to have an average, baseline society based on acceptance, tolerance, and the value of the individual. Sounds nice, right? The problem isn't the principles the society is based on, however--the problem is the fact that you've created a society. As soon as humans (or hell, any other form of social animal) think of themselves as a society, certain elements of that society will look for anyone that strays from the principles of that society, and they will direct the same hate and fear inward as the classic xenophobe directs outward. And when the Internet sees a violation of its treasured values--or even hears a rumor of the violation of its treasured values--some of its members tend to react pitilessly (and occasionally without reason) to neutralize, punish, and remove the them. And again, this isn't specific to the right or the left. McCarthyism and the Red Scare is psychologically exactly the same as getting your friends to dox the hell out of someone you maybe heard might have been insensitive to black people at some point.
TL;DR The nightmarish forms of "political correctness" you describe are just humans ruthlessly purging any deviation from what their perceived social group views as normal and proper behavior, and that's what xenophobia is too. In either case, the really tricky bit is discerning how much deviance from the norm really is harmful (and should therefore be stopped for the good of society) and how much is us just being dicks. It's so tricky a bit that we've been literally killing each other on the topic even before we as a species could speak the words to describe what we were doing. And we continue to do so today.
As a postscript, I honestly believe it is possible to have a discussion about this without vitriol and argument. It starts by having faith in your fellow discussors!
I'd rather be considered a rude asshole than censor myself because someone, somewhere might be offended by it. If I did that, I'd never say anything at all. You talk about your happy family, and share your happy stories. You have every right to share them. If we aren't allowed to share the happy stories, out of consideration for those people without happy stories, then there will only be sad stories. A world of sad stories paints a sad picture of that world, but this is not a sad world. If you have a happy life and a happy family then scream it to the heavens, scream to all the world that there are happy endings, and that life can be wonderful! Because god knows there are a lot of people out there who need to hear more happy endings. I need to hear more happy endings. Anyone who begrudges you your happy ending, anyone who hears your happy story and gets angry for it, is someone who will never be happy. Because that person doesn't want to be happy. That person wants to wallow in their misery and pull the rest of the world down with them. That person isn't worth listening to.
Hm. I think my own comment ended up being a little self-absorbed and off-topic... I'll try to clarify.
A written work usually says more about the writer than it does about the subject being written. When we're aware of our own personal beliefs and biases, we become better writers... regardless of what those biases and beliefs are. Writers are in the business of asking "what if." So it's good to question yourself, as well as the world around you.
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This is... kind of a mean thing you wrote. Mean and bitter.
Maybe your wrong about why people aren't listening to you. Which is a shame, because you deserve to be heard. Everyone does.
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OUT OF THE SHADOWS (of very deep water) AND INTO THE LIGHT (of somewhat shallower water)
I haven't read any of the other comments but I would like to tell you something that I feel is important nd that I think you already have a handle on:
You don't need to apologize to anyone for how fortunate you have been and you go right on being the great person you are and write as you feel you should. These other folks may have a point, but as you said it is from their perspective. You are entitled to your perspective as well. They can like it or not. That is called acceptance and tolerance, which is what I thought we were all about anyway. I'm glad that you know this and reacted accordingly. You are a very good writer and a good pony!
3544611
Okay, then that's what you are.
I mean, I can't psychoanalyze you because
lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ThOX1OKYmbk/VeJNLPmQ32I/AAAAAAAAB24/Efe4quWJNuQ/s640/blogger-image-1399230817.jpg
...I'M A BRONY, NOT SIGMUND FREUD!
3544611
No problem! And no, you're not alone in feeling that the Rarity/Spike relationship is a bit on the dysfunctional side, which is one of the reasons why I can't ship it without some serious deconstruction/reconstruction first. Kind of like Twilestia. Although Twilight's princesshood has really reduced canonical instances of pathological lionization and adoration of Celestia, which suggests that she may be slowly becoming someone who could actually love the Sun Princess in a healthy way. Spike got some of that in "Inspiration Manifestation," but he needs a lot more.
I read an interesting study the other day that suggested that millenials were actually less tolerant than previous generations, and all of their apparent increased "tolerance" is simply because they like some historically oppressed groups more (such as gays). Actual tolerance for opposing viewpoints has actually gone down somewhat from the previous generation, possibly due to excessive coddling and/or insularity.
I think that people getting upset over trivial things is closely linked to this phenomenon.
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Thank you gentlemen, for a reasoned, calm, and interesting discussion that included multiple viewpoints I had not considered. I will admit that I am uneasy with Spike's characterizations for largely reasons related to this discussion. Not the SPECIFIC instances mind you, but in general there was a significant emotional distance placed between the boys and girls in my family. Perhaps due to a conservative & military upbringing which significantly feared 'gay contamination.' It must be remembered that "Don't Ask Don't Tell" is only 20 years old, which means it's only as old as the average Brony. Even then, purges were still common. As a sufferer of PTSD from combat experience, I do advocate trigger warnings and see them as quite relevant, though the specific situation you mentioned seemed to be quite out of the norm.
Overton's window has always been problematic though frankly if my grand children's generation don't grow up being disgusted by my moral viewpoint on something or other then I weep for humanity. Thomas Jefferson was a great man in his time, whom owned, and regularly bedded, his slaves. The whole of human social progress is measured in these incremental movements of Overton's window.
Two thousand years ago the abolition of slavery seemed impossible. A thousand years ago the idea of gender equality was unthinkable in many parts of the world. Five hundred years ago they said it would be impossible for Catholics and Protestants to live and work together because how could you live or work with someone whom you thought was going to hell?
It's late for me and the medicine is making me ramble so I will stop for the evening. I didn't know that you wrote Skin Horse, I think it's a lovely little comic which I am glad to own in physical form. Thank you for elevating our discussion out of the usual muck pits of the internet.
EDIT: 3544611 I forgot to mention, but I wanted to thank you as well for your calmness in this discussion and to reassure you that you are not the only one whom feels that way. Sparity is my least favorite ship in the show. Frankly I feel that its an important part of growing up to move past one's first crush as general one does not have the life experience to make their first relationship their ONLY relationship. Frankly I think such thinking on the part of society bespeaks to a certain confusion of codependence with romance but that's likely because I've never seen a couple that were 'first crushes' that ever made it past a couple years of marriage. Regardless, I agree that the ship doesn't seem to hold water particularly well.
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You're welcome! It's all about keeping it about the ideas rather than the people supplying them, I think!
And thanks for reading "Skin Horse"!
I suppose I'm one of those fans who always had a problem with the way the show portrays Twilight's treatment of Spike (for the record, I came from a nuclear family that was boringly wholesome). A lot of what we see is necessary for the show because Spike is the sidekick, he's there for Twilight to expound on the plot or her feelings, and I get that. I also like your analogy that Twilight is a lot like a big sister who is basically raising her little brother, just like Applejack and Apple Bloom.
What has always disturbed me is the way Spike's life revolves around Twilight, while Twilight never seems to put Spike first in a routine capacity. Whether it is Spike armoring himself to talk Twilight down because he fears she will explode at him (literally), or Spike single-handedly cleaning a castle and cooking dinner for visiting dignitaries, this is a child who takes care of his adult sister, rather than the other way around. Don't get me wrong, Twilight protects Spike, and when she realizes he has a problem she acts swiftly to fix it. I'm sure Twilight loves Spike, and being a teenage mother/guardian is extremely difficult. But in a day-to-day sense, Twilight doesn't seem to think about him as more than someone who exists to make her life easier.
We know from Amending Fences that before the show started, Twilight was extremely thoughtless of other ponies who considered herself her friends. Not mean, she just literally didn't seem to think about anything other than her studies. It's hard not to think that she didn't give Spike much more consideration than Moondancer, forming a pattern of relying on Spike without devoting much time to his needs. The problem is, I don't think she has ever really changed from that unconscious pattern that was created before she learned the "magic of friendship."
I would love to be proven wrong about this in a future episode. I don't think we need another "Spike is the hero" episode to do this, just some quick background scenes that show Twilight caring for Spike in a way that implies she does this all the time. Twilight giving Spike homework (since he doesn't attend school with all the other kids, I hope she home-schools him) or picking up his favorite food while shopping, something that shows Twilight regularly thinks about the needs and future growth of her charge, rather than just an assistant she doesn't need to worry about.
Some take it a little too far, I agree with that. But I still feel like Spike is mistreated. Sure, he gets something now and then, but it's no excuse considering the number of times I've seen abuse piled on him without so much as a thought, or worse a laugh at his expense. I mean, some of it would've been borderline fatal if he wasn't a dragon.
All in all, I guess I can accept it as long as they simply acknowledge how much they've used him. Far too many times, they don't.
3544802
And, as I believe old Sigmund would have said, were he alive and able to watch MLP:FiM today, sometimes the unicorn horn is just the unicorn horn.
3544457
Yeah, I think there's a segment of bronies who see Spike as a stand-in for men in general and get aggravated by his role in the show. (I could write a long post about the surprising desire to claim victimhood that can be seen in the male geek culture, especially online, but most of it would be vastly off-topic, so I don't.)
As I see Spike, he's a smart kid who's in some ways extremely mature, sometimes more so than Twilight, but in other ways not nearly as mature as he (or Twilight!) thinks. He doesn't represent men as a whole; not even the Mane Six represent women as a whole, despite each of them showcasing one way to be a girl or a woman. Above all, they're all characters, not allegories or exemplars.
3545473
If we're following the rabbit hole of relateability and Spike... there are a lot of people who felt left out and ignored, who relate to Spike by watching him be left out and ignored, even if it's a joke or something that has to be read into "then there was a party, and the staff didn't remember to put Spike in it."
The most extreme Spike reactions tend to be "Spike is abused and that's awful and no one notices/cares" and "Spike is lame, why would we want to hear about his problems? They don't exist."
Each is made more extreme by the other. Every time someone says "You drank the Kool-Aid" then someone who didn't like Spike is pushed further from sympathy, and every time someone says "Spike's lame, and you're insane for believing that he's treated badly, he has a great life" every person who sees Spike as relateable but unfortunate is pushed further into believing that people just look at him like he's a nuisance and lack serious sympathy for the problems of Spike (/of boys).
Eventually this becomes even more extreme, where someone will react to "I think Spike's relationship is overall happy" or "I think Spike's relationship with the girls needs improvement" with hostility.
I don't think it's so surprising to see the desire to claim victimhood in male geek culture, but, you're right in saying that would be a rather long discussion and off topic.
Oh, and response to the general post: uh... I guess that's a way to look at it, that being able to see Spike's home life as healthy is advertising your own happy life... I'm not sure if everyone who can read bad things into Spike's life has that problem, but that's probably at least a potential problem with the more extreme examples.
I may not think their life is perfect, and think that Spike being taken somewhat for granted by the only person we have confirmed as his caretaker is... potentially tragic, and internally waffle on how tragic I honestly think it is, there is definitely room for a healthy and overall happy portrayal of their relationships. And so, godspeed, sir.
3544364 To be fair, Rarity treats all males this way.
3544660
Wait, what?
Was it something like this?
previews.123rf.com/images/moori/moori1202/moori120200222/12519055-a-female-with-a-wicked-demon-hairstyle-having-a-raw-meat-dinner-Stock-Photo.jpg
3546322
Didn't you know? They met at Miskatonic University.
The only thing I'm going to say about the Spike partisans is that my sympathy for their position gets quickly overwhelmed by my distaste for their behavior. I wandered into this thread to see a giant ocean of red -1s on every post that doesn't explicitly support the Spike faction. I mean, if 3544708 can be downvoted just for cracking a joke about Humboldt squid …
Anyway, just wanted to say two things:
3545036
Thanks for being a voice of reason in the comments.
3544357
Author of Hard Reset 2 here. Thank you for the name-drop!
WRT Twilight's altruism and your inner desire to write something edgier — I made a firm decision at the start of that story that in order to put Twilight through the sort of torture she would have to endure, that the non-negotiable core of the story was for her to be driven to a very pony morality, for lack of a better term, and (*spoilers for the unwritten parts, but only thematically) to come to realize that the only way out of Mutually Assured Destruction was to break the game, and ultimately to drag Celestia and Chrysalis with her kicking and screaming. I totally have gone edgier elsewhere, but if I had done it in that story, it would have quickly become overwhelming.
If you want to see some unflinching cynicism from me, it's mostly not in the pony stuff, but Hearth Swarming Eve is pretty close. (I actually need to go back and edit that someday to defang it a bit, because right now due to author error, Celestia approves of the whole setup and she wasn't quite meant to.)
3546779
"A sea of red?" I see a few downvotes here and there, mostly for posts about political correctness. But I see far more upvotes. More importantly everybody's being articulate and reasonably civil, despite the obvious disagreement.
But, yeah, who could downvote Nazi Squidward? I don't understand...
3544458
Alright, maybe I engaged in some hyperbole — but when I start scrolling through the comments and the first six (save the most pro-Spike one) all, unusually, have a downvote … you said it yourself:
You're right, though, kudos to everyone else for (when it didn't digress into a political argument over PC, and sometimes even when it did) staying positive and respectful.
3546779
You're welcome! Glad you found at least some rhetorical value in my text-walls.