Help! My Heart is Full of Pony! - Bigness · 2:27am Feb 28th, 2020
I recently re-watched Secret of My Excess.
For those who don't remember, the premise is simple: Spike, after getting showered with gifts on his first birthday spent in Ponyville, develops an insatiable greed. This greed makes him grow into a monstrous dragon beast. In the end, he snaps out of it when he notices a gemstone that Rarity is wearing - a fire ruby that he had sacrificed for her in the very beginning of the story.
This is an interesting episode because it is so out of place with the rest of the series.
From a world building standpoint, it's sort of a dead end. It's impossible to develop the culture of the dragon race, and treat them as a sentient people while acknowledging the existence of this episode. So, in later seasons, the writers wisely ignored it. The dragons we meet in Dragon Quest, and in Gauntlet of Fire (and various other late-season episodes) were characterized as obnoxious teenagers with few moral scruples. Surely they experienced greed. Why, then, did none of them turn into monstrous kaiju giants?
Because that premise simply doesn't work when developing a race with an actual culture.
It's true that a few episodes made passing mention of the greed-growth-curse in an attempt to maintain continuity, but the fact remains that, in the context of Equestria as a larger world, the central premise of Secret of My Excess makes very little sense.
However, the episode is impossible to dismiss entirely, because the emotional content is pure gold. Monster Spike seizes Rarity and climbs a cliff (a la King Kong). When Rarity expresses outrage that this "beast" would try to take the gem that "Spikey Wikey" had given her, it shows how much she cares for him. This was a ruby that she had wanted dearly - even greedily herself - but here, in the claws of a monster (that she doesn't know is Spike), Rarity demonstrates that she values the gem more for its emotional significance than for its radiance. She adores it precisely because Spike had been so generous in giving it to her.
It's enough to break the spell, and bring the old Spike back. And then, of course, they fall from the thousand foot height, since Spike is no longer gigantic. This scene is an absolutely beautiful scene. Neither Spike nor Rarity know that they're going to be saved, nor have they any reason to think that they might. But when Spike tries to confess his love for Rarity. she puts her hoof on his lips, as if to say "I know." It's a profound moment - one that says so very much without any words at all.
Think about how uncommon that is in a show like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, where they literally sum up the moral lesson verbally at the end of every episode!
It's a breathtaking moment. One we all remember. However, may favorite thing about this episode might actually be what happens after that. Spike sulks on the ledge of a bridge - ashamed of what he had done - of what he had become. In this moment, it becomes clear that this is a choice for Spike.
He, as a character, had yet to grow into his own at this point. He was no hero of the Crystal Empire. He had no glory for himself, and frankly, barely any dignity. He had yet to grow into the confident, sarcastic voice of reason that he became in later seasons. In early episodes, Spike was laughed at rather than with, and the show made it quite clear that, while he loved Twilight, and she, him, he was often frustrated doing her grunt work. The running joke was that Spike sort of got kicked around.
In Secret of My Excess, this "monster" was Spike's first real taste of power. Of bigness. And he gave it up for the greater good. The sight of him staring into his own reflection from the ledge of that bridge - it's haunting. It's noble.
It's a turning point for Spike that went largely unnoticed. He chose to be small. And that, for him, was the first step toward real bigness.
Discuss.
-Sprocket
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There's not really anything that had to change about how Dragon's work, the Greed Growth is still established as being a thing, but it's not just about being greedy, but actually being able to work on that Greed and express it with tangible gains. The larger the Horde they amass, the larger the Dragons grows. The teen dragons simply never manage to amass a large enough personal horde uncontested to trigger it, and those that do then just go off to find some cave to hole up in and guard their treasures.
Thank you, again, for sharing these views of the episodes. :)
5210838
That sounds plausible.
5210838
While that theory is technically possible within the framework of the show, the fact that it's never outwardly mentioned makes it impossible in and of itself. An evolutionary trait like greed-growth would be central to their culture. Simply put, if it worked that way, they would have mentioned it.
If that theory were true, dragons also wouldn't have any reason to have packs, as power would be more easily amassed looting villages, and not having to share the spoils.
5210923
Firstly, I'd like to say that you've convinced me to go and rewatch this episode. I love the your conclusion about Spike and (from memory) think you're absolutely bang-on with that.
However, whilst I agree that you're probably right about why the growth-greed curse is pretty much ignored in later canon, I disagree that it would be impossible to have it as part of a society. Two examples off the top of my head:
a) Dragons prefer to live in packs and share spoils because they realise that allowing one loner to have all of the spoils to themselves would create a threat to their hoards. Considering that dragons appear to be inherently rather greedy, it stands to reason that this sort of risk-averse behaviour is plausible.
b) Alternatively, in their "natural environment" dragons normally end up coming into conflict with their siblings/neighbours/peers over their hoards and those with larger hoards naturally attract more attention. Not only could this explain why dragons tend to form packs (as since an individual dragon is at a natural disadvantage against another with a larger hoard, several working together could potentially overcome that disadvantage) but also why it doesn't come up often beyond off-handed mentions (it's considered to be "just the way things are", the same way most humans or ponies consider housing, feeding and clothing your young until they're capable of independence to be "just the way things are").
PS: If you spot any massive logical leaps, or worse grammatical mistakes, please take pity on me as finished I writing this at 1:59AM