Glee (season finale thoughts)

Spoilers if you haven't seen the season 6 finale yet!

So I finally caught up with the episodes I missed for MLP (I hadn't seen the two episodes before this weekend either) and oh man... Oh man! I'm so excited. That season finale was awesome!

1) I love how they've re-purposed Trixie's character from occasional antagonist to heroic ally.

2) I know some changeling fans may be complaining about their redemption, but honestly? I thought it was great. It was always irritating to me that this race was inherently "evil" when the show's entire message is that anyone is capable of being good. Evil is a choice. Chrysalis (and Tirek, and Sombra) illustrated that to a T.

3) The continuous growth of Starlight Glimmer. Her social anxiety. Her overcoming the dependence on magic. Her unique perspective on the power of redemption.

And that's not all! If you guys have been following my Overpriced Writing Advice posts, then you'll know that I once shared an idea very similar to season 6's finale. It wasn't fully developed, mind you, but it had a lot of the core elements that we ended up seeing in the show:

Twilight, her friends, and the princesses are somehow incapacitated, forcing the show's current reformed heroes to save the day. (The only thing my idea was missing was Thorax). Discord and Trixie bickered, as I knew they would, because two self-absorbed characters resent sharing the spotlight, so they have to criticize, minimalize, and mock the other's abilities. Starlight has to get between them to focus on the task at hand. Trixie uses her illusionist abilities to powerful effect. Discord was far too powerful as he was, so I guessed that he'd have to face a vastly more powerful foe. This was achieved in a way by taking away Discord's powers. He basically was left with only his wits (or bad jokes, however you wanna see it.)

Luna was even in a mentor-type role for Starlight Glimmer like how she is in my blog-only fic series, Letters.

I think the key things from my original idea that didn't come close in the finale was my ideas on what Starlight's conflicts and problems would be. I imagined her being more brash, thus I envisioned the internal conflict for her as a protagonist was "The end justifies the means." Instead, the internal conflict for the season finale was more like, "I'm not worthy of leading/Bad things happen when I'm in charge." The episode showed her as being extremely anxious nearly every step of the way. I guessed her inner problem could be fears of letting down Twilight. Starlight's inner problem was more like, "I fear I haven't changed enough from the pony I used to be." The misguided goal I had for Starlight was: "To prove to Twilight Sparkle that she has progressed as a pupil by solving the problem in a swift and effective manner, regardless of the methods used." Instead it seemed to be: "Everything will be all right so long as I'm not in charge" (or something along those lines.) Oh, and the heroes actually saved the day instead of just minimizing some of the damages.

Heh... but I was right about the finale's theme! Friendship is magic. Honestly, that's every finale's theme, but still.

(If you're confused about how I'm using the terms up above, just check out my OPWA post on Story Theme).

Soooo.... yeah. I'm feeling pretty good about that right now. So good that since seeing the trailer a few days ago I tried to henpeck at my fanfic drafts: Chapter 9 for Her Collar, Her Love is at one whole page (whoo!) and Chapter 22 of What They Expect to Give is at a whole two pages. If that progress sounds underwhelming, consider that Chapter 9 had just a paragraph exactly a month ago, and Chapter 22 was barely a page a week ago.