Doylist Intrusion #1: Fame, Misfortune and in between

Today, I’m going to tell you exactly how Fame and Misfortune came to be.

Well, it’s just a hypothesis. I have good arguments, but no solid proof, nor a method of experimental confirmation. But it explains rather a lot.

To remind you, the facts rumors we have to work with are as follows:

• M.A. Larson has stated, in an interview or in a podcast, that he is getting credited for an upcoming episode that actually has very little to do with his original script.
• Fame and Misfortune started out as a Season 4 episode.
• When called on the episode being mean towards adult fans, M.A. Larson replied on Twitter: “Wasn’t my idea.” (Well, I can confirm this one, I saw the tweet while it was still up.)

And we know that Fame and Misfortune is credited to Larson.

So what exactly happened?

It was entirely unrelated, at first: I was meditating on the intricacies of Twilight’s Kingdom and the whole mess that episode was, because a friend asked me for advice on his story. While the other results of this analysis are a post for another day, and involved a lot of mental acrobatics, along the way, this logic chain emerged while trying to determine what the keys to the Chest of Harmony actually are:

1. The subsequent Season 5 places Twilight in a proselytizing role. She is to promote friendship in Equestria, very much like a missionary promotes a religion. Cutie Map missions are pretty much explicitly that. But all of her friends are participating in this activity equally with her – often, more than she does.

2. The specific keys to the Chest of Harmony emerge in the following explicit conditions:

   • A member of the Mane 6 must be placed in a situation where she is required to make a choice between following her cutie mark, or something otherwise very dear to her, and following the virtue of her Element. This form of the rule is clear for for Applejack (family vs. honesty,) Fluttershy (care for creatures vs. kindness,) Rainbow Dash (athletic achievement vs. loyalty,) and Pinkie Pie (party planning vs. laughter.) It’s a bit more murky for Rarity, but it’s probably “fashion vs. generosity.” The choice must be made in favor of the Element. It is likewise true for Twilight in an explicit fashion – she chooses between alicorn magic and friendship.
   • This choice, as Twilight explicitly says, must inspire someone else to also make the same kind of choice and change their life.
   • A souvenir in memory of this event must remain, which then becomes a key.

   When the rule is defined like this, it does not require a leap of logic to conclude, that each of these keys is a certificate of the ability to proselytize: you can only promote a virtue if you are able to put it above what is otherwise dearest to you. Once all the friends certify this ability, they get access to the Cutie Map, which permits and requires them to practice it.

3. So let us assume for a moment that Twilight’s Kingdom didn’t happen yet, but Twilight should be receiving her key right about now. What could possibly require her to make a choice between friendship and magic? In fact, what would certify Twilight’s ability to promote friendship?

   The answer becomes immediately obvious once you take Fame and Misfortune into account, and assume that it is the hypothetical missing episode, or originally was: Publishing the Friendship Journal would be the certificate itself. And it could easily put Twilight into such an internal conflict if she had to sacrifice the study of magic to publish it. It, likewise, would readily provide ponies inspired by this action and an opportunity to receive an appropriate souvenir, which would then become the key.

But for whatever unseen reason, the script was shelved. Whether they decided it doesn’t work in the intended role, or was too subtle, or something else, we don’t know. Instead of the choice derived from the lessons the Mane 6 learned, Twilight had to make a much blunter choice of forgiving Discord’s betrayal and including him in the list of friends, thus inspiring him to believe that friendship is more important than magic. We got an epic episode which, upon analysis, is ridiculously weird.

A few years later, the script that eventually became Fame and Misfortune was unearthed, heavily edited – retaining the song, which no longer fit the remaining parts, swapping Starlight in to replace Spike, jumbling the bits around, adding a bunch of extra material, and above all, losing its original meaning in the deeper framework of the series – and this is what got animated.

Welcome to the anthill.

Comments

[Themaskedferret]

It does sound weirdly plausible. I do feel for Larson getting so much flack.

[Cursed Quill]

So what's Starlight's Certificate, that the map calls her?

[DannyJ]

4639583

Starlight doesn't need a certificate. She just mind controls the Cutie Map.

[Cursed Quill]

4639639
"helped" "fix" the map, indeed

[DannyJ]

4639652

image.ibb.co/bJykbk/Glimmer.png

[Oliver]

4639583 4639639

This post is marked as “Doylist Intrusion” precisely because it’s a piece of Doylist logic explaining things about the writers rather than the characters. Starlight has no such certificate, of course, and she probably shouldn’t be allowed to be the missionary of friendship, but was anyway.

I expect this particular piece of deep structure of the show was the brainchild of Meghan McCarthy, who was the story editor between 2012 and 2015. Once McCarthy moved up to “Head of Storytelling,” she was occupied with the cloud of related projects – i.e. Equestria Girls, the potential movie, which seems like it spent quite some time in development hell – and was no longer in a position to monitor things quite so closely. But Larson still knew about it, and was the story editor for Season 5.

By the time Season 7 rolled in, Larson was already out, and the very idea that the show had any sort of deeper structure like that was forgotten entirely, because nobody keeps a show bible. Season 7 has no deep structure whatsoever, and even its opening episode has no relation at all to the closing one.

[howard035]

You gotta be careful with these Doylist intrustions Oliver, or I might start thinking MLP is just a cartoon.

It's an interesting theory, and I can see it as quite possible. The staff wanted to have another season finale like the GGG, without a monster of the week. But without Tirek, who would blow up the library? And if the library wasn't blown up, why would Twilight move into her new giant crystal Friendship Playset? Staff did hint heavily at executive meddling for Twilight's Kingdom.

But I'm a little fuzzy on how this conflict would work. I could totally see Toola Roola giving Twilight a souvenir, no problem. But what would the conflict that Twilight has to choose from arise? She publishes the book, and that is the only significant choice Twilight makes. How could background ponies whining at her friends provoke a deep enough moral quandary to let Twilight acquire the key?

4639639
4639583 Starlight has a special relationship with the map. First she hacked it, then she helped repair it. The only other non-Mane 6 bearer with a special connection to the Cutie Map is Spike, but it'll be a cold day in Tartarus before he gets called!

[Oliver]

4640879

She publishes the book, and that is the only significant choice Twilight makes. How could background ponies whining at her friends provoke a deep enough moral quandary to let Twilight acquire the key?

Some kind of choice between magic researcher career and friendship career for example. We can’t really tell, because the setup for this sort of choice would have been in the parts of the script that got cut off, but multiple options can be imagined.

The only other non-Mane 6 bearer with a special connection to the Cutie Map is Spike, but it’ll be a cold day in Tartarus before he gets called!

Tartarus called to report epic snowfall today.

[howard035]

4640933

Some kind of choice between magic researcher career and friendship career for example. We can’t really tell, because the setup for this sort of choice would have been in the parts of the script that got cut off, but multiple options can be imagined.

Ah, I was having trouble imagining it. Ok, how about this: in the original script, only Ponyville gets copies of the Journal. They still react like jerks, et. al. Near the end, a publisher asks Twilight to publish her book nationally, spreading the message of friendship nationwide at the cost of embarrassing her friends. Twilight chooses...... something, and the map gives her a key. Which one is the right choice from the point of view of the Tree?

Tartarus called to report epic snowfall today.

I can't officially comment on that, as I haven't gotten to PoC 7x15.

[Oliver]

4640944

Which one is the right choice from the point of view of the Tree?

What, you want me to write the entire episode for them, too? :)

[howard035]

4641204

What, you want me to write the entire episode for them, too? :)

I mean.... yes?

[Oliver]

4641291

I mean…. yes?

It would certainly be something to consider for Aporia, only, it’s supposed to end far sooner than this point in Twilight’s life would be reached… :)

[Meta Four]

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If anyone hasn’t already seen this, M.A. Larson had a panel at BronyCAN. The first 12 minutes or so are very relevant to this discussion.

If you don’t have time to watch the video, here are the points I got from it:

• No, they didn’t take Larson’s script and edit it behind his back. The “Fame and Misfortune” Larson wrote was the episode we got.
• Nevertheless, Larson wrote that script under duress.
• Premises and basic plot outlines get approved ahead of time, then get assigned to individual writers willy-nilly.
• Larson got assigned this episode, and didn’t like it from the beginning. He didn’t feel like it was an accurate representation of the fandom, he didn’t like turning the background ponies into assholes, and he didn’t like that nopony seemed to learn any lessons at the end.
• Larson tried to change the premise. His version would have been more focused on Pinkie Pie, and the publishing of the journal would be a metaphor for Twitter, of all things. The antagonist ponies would have gotten so caught up in arguing with Pinkie that they forgot there’s a real person on the other end that they’re heaping abuse on. At the end, they’d realize what they were doing and reconcile with Pinkie, and it would play out as an homage to the end of It’s a Wonderful Life.
• The Powers That Be vetoed Larson’s idea, and told him to stick to the original premise. So he wrote a script according to those instructions, and that became “Fame and Misfortune”.
• There is indeed no communication between the writers.

[howard035]

4699374 M.A. Larson was awesome in this video.