Help! My Heart is Full of Pony! - The Hitch Problem · 2:52am Oct 4th, 2022
In My Little Pony: A New Generation, Hitch is a sheriff who comically keeps to the letter of the law - generally characterized by enforcing litter ordinances that he can recite from the town charter from memory. Over the course of the film, however, Hitch gets to know Izzy and Zipp and Pipp, and grows to see that he was wrong. Not about litter, of course, but rather, about unicorns and pegasi, and the unjust laws, superstitions, and economic power structures that caused Maretime Bay to fear them and systematically "other" any foreigners.
That pivot is what made Hitch a compelling character.
He was a well-meaning pony who took his social responsibility seriously, but was also strong enough to admit that he was wrong, and actually causing social harm in the process. His arc is a morality play of sorts - an example of how rigid, dogmatic thinking can put a good-hearted person on the wrong side of history if they're not careful, but also how they can become a genuine force for good if they are receptive to earnest critique, and open to change.
Sadly, all that goes away in Make Your Mark. The writers don't seem to know what to do with Hitch, so he ends up inserted weirdly as an authority figure where authority figures simply do not belong.
SPOILERS BELOW
In Episode 2, Growing Pains, the pony who once adhered religiously to town ordinances, is now a despot who rules by decree, (simply because the plot required the story to explore the question of earth ponies and whether or not they could control their new found fauna magic). He makes up laws on the fly that go against everything he came to believe in in MLP: A New Generation.
In Episode 5, The Cutie Mark Mix-Up, Hitch is depicted as overseeing a community garden with an iron fist, er...iron hoof. The very idea is ridiculous as it negates everything that a community garden is supposed to be, and what it is supposed to represent.
In Episode 8, Have You Seen This Dragon?, Sparky goes missing, and Hitch does not take it well, (nor should he). In this episode, we see Hitch's softer side as he gets (rightfully) worried sick about Sparky. However, rather than simply being scared, or vulnerable, Hitch turns into a gritty masked vigilante both above and outside the law.
That's not funny.
He even forgets about Sparky altogether in a way, and vows vengeance against whomever "crossed Hitch."
Right now, this toxic mindset has permeated rather a lot of actual police training, and it has caused rather a lot of actual police brutality, as mentally unwell police officers enact their Punisher fantasies.
I'm not going to do a deep dive on the politics of police work, as that's well outside of the scope of what this page is about, but I do feel a need to point out that Make Your Mark's approach to the subject has been deeply unsettling.
The show creators never stopped to question what the role of policing in Maretime Bay could or should be, and in their lack of awareness or planning for how to integrate Hitch into the action, they ended up making a lot of unintentional statements that mirror real problems in our society.
There's rather a lot I enjoyed about Make Your Mark, despite its clumsy beginnings, (and I will be writing about that as well, so don't mistake me for a neigh-sayer), but I would be ignoring my conscience to refrain from pointing out that there's something inherently cynical and deeply *unpony* about the idea that police oversight needs to be integrated into *gardening* and every other aspect of public life. It's equally wrong to treat a vigilante mindset as something normal for a cop to have under the surface.
In Chapter 3, I do hope to see more of the Hitch that likes to listen to beat jazz, and doesn't flip out every time he feels vulnerable. He's still in there somewhere.
Discuss.
-Sprocket
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That bothered me because thats not his job. He is not arbiter, merely one who sees those who have acted against the letter of the law and by extension the community are captured and given due process to the Courts.
Of course he could possibly have more leeway if he saw immediate danger, but still...
You'd be surprised how often things turn out like that for such institutions dear heart. And what gets me is that more often then not its someone who has had nothing to do with its initial construction or subsequent upkeep.
Got nothing to say here outside I agree, though I do like how they've treated him. Usually in "girl" shows, male characters are seen as goofs or simply horrid. Not to say that female aren't treated as negatively on "boy" media, its just its not as often addressed.
As to him being scared and vulnerable, he is. Its just he's acting like how guys tend to act in those circumstances, namely with anger.
I agree with you here in principal, but one has to remember that they've had a huge societal upheaval alongside the return of a quite possibly dangerous aspect of their species. One can hardly blame them for a bit of overt caution. That said, I do like that Hitch is coming from a good, if decidedly misguided, place in regards to his behavior by and large.
However, like our worlds police, he's not your average citizen. He must hold himself to a higher standard going forward, and if he cant, he should forfeit his post.
(Quite behind on blog posts, sorry.)
I kind of actually wonder if, while Zephyr Heights has a queen with at least some actually power and responsibilities, whatever other government apparatuses there may be, and Bridlewood for all we know has been practicing a form of functional anarchism for hundreds of years, or something else with little formal structure, Hitch basically accidentally launched a coup in Maretime Bay.
I mean... we haven't seen any explicit government of the place. No equivalent to Mayor Mare, nor even a distant Princess Celestia. Regarding its state at the start of the movie, it seems plausible that Maretime Bay is basically a company town for Canterlogic. Then the boss's son launches a paramilitary coup. Then he's deposed and the company's power base is broken, so... who's in charge? Well, Maretime Bay just had the sheriff take over, and they've still got another, and better, sheriff. The rightful sheriff, one might even say. And he was on the winning side, and he's friends with former-outcast-now-prophet? Sunny Starscout. And he's pretty handsome, on calendars and everything.
You say he makes up laws on the fly, but who's supposed to be making those laws? I'm not sure if anyone in Maretime Bay actually knows the answer to that at the moment, but it seems plausible they're assuming it's Hitch -- and I'm not sure he's doing well with having that thrust upon him.
"The show creators never stopped to question what the role of policing in Maretime Bay could or should be"
Yeeeeah, I do kind of suspect the above implications might be unintentional, and they just, as you said, didn't think things through. Which is a pity, because it seems like they could do somethings both interesting and potentially useful (How to properly deal well with an unexpected increase in one's authority, for instance.) with them.
"but I would be ignoring my conscience to refrain from pointing out that there's something inherently cynical and deeply *unpony* about the idea that police oversight needs to be integrated into *gardening* and every other aspect of public life. It's equally wrong to treat a vigilante mindset as something normal for a cop to have under the surface."
I mean, Maretime Bay was introduced to us as to at least some extent a postapocalyptic dystopia, where the corporate rulers of the world's last surviving settlement (not counting the non earth ponies, of course) provide for the people but also keep them in line through fear of that outside their (the citizens' and the company's both) control. Then in the course of the film, the community's reaction to an outsider appearing and not actually doing much is to rally behind a charismatic dictator and begin militarizing and preparing for offensive war. Authoritarianism is a well-established tradition, and IIRC it was implied Sunny only got away with as much as she did as a dissident because of personal connections to high officials. If they weren't ponies, things may well have been much worse.
...Though, again, I'd feel better if I trusted the above was intentional and going to be addressed well (which could, again, be interesting and useful (How do we rise to better things from a past situation of oppression and injustice?)), instead of unintended implications that'll be ignored.
(Also, there's the question of how Hitch pulled in foreign military assets to assist him...)
Oh, and of course, thank you for sharing your thoughts. :)
5690372
"He is not arbiter, merely one who sees those who have acted against the letter of the law and by extension the community are captured and given due process to the Courts."
What courts, though? I mean, sure, we could assume there's a full legislative and judicial system offscreen... but we've seen and heard nothing about it. No one says they're going to complain to the mayor or the town council about Hitch when he overreaches. No civilian government officials came out to oppose and/or endorse Sprout during his coup.
Who came together representing the three communities, in the film, to put the frame back together? Queen Haven, Queen of Zephyr Heights. Alphabittle, who for all we know is the big man (Big mare? Big stallion?) of Bridlewood... and Phyllis Cloverleaf, owner of Canterlogic.
5692250
Well, I am going off what a sheriff actually does and assuming a lot admittedly.
The same can be said I suppose of gen 4's government I'd say.
Again I'm going off the fact that a Sheriff is elected to their position, so one assumes if enough sand gets kicked up he could lose his role. Or Hitch just pulled a Borgeson one day
Well Sprout was elected to supplant any assumed official.
Except when he's not... what?
Well, technically, they aren't in charge, they've just the Alpha's. You could argue Haven is, but hers seems a more titular and honorary title then anything.
Also Alphabittle seems to be in charge solely because he's not a sad sack and actually has an attention span, which is as good a means as determining ability towards governance as any I suppose
5692250
Thanks for your thoughts.
5692271
"Well, I am going off what a sheriff actually does and assuming a lot admittedly."
Which is understandable... but titles also aren't always indicative of reality.
"The same can be said I suppose of gen 4's government I'd say."
Ehh. The thing is, we know Mayor Mare exists. We know Celestia, then her and Luna both, rule from Canterlot. We see at one point representatives of different areas gathering together in Canterlot...
We may not know much in the way of the details, but we know at least some of the most salient ones.
"Again I'm going off the fact that a Sheriff is elected to their position, so one assumes if enough sand gets kicked up he could lose his role."
I mean, maybe. But as with my comment above, there are plenty of examples of positions that are officially elected, where the outcome of the elections, if they still happen at all, is in absolutely no doubt and the actual desires of the masses may have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Now, I don't think Hitch would deliberately try to subvert an election in his favor... but if, say, every election for the past few hundred years has elected whoever was undemocratically chosen for the role, but whatever the mechanism is, the conception held by him and the other citizens of Maretime Bay of what an election even is may have shifted.
...Darn, now I kind of want an episode in which it's time for the sheriff election, both Izzy (who comes from a less formal but more genuine democratic background in Bridlewood) and the royal siblings (whose education had a special focus on politics and had access to Zephyr Heights's records, but who are also the children of a non-figurehead queen regnant in a system with succession at least non-elective enough that it's already clear Zipp's the heir to the throne) are surprised by Maretime Bay's fossilized and warped democratic institutions, and then we get a discussion of differing forms of government, particularly differing forms of democracy, and their various merits and drawbacks, before an effort is made to reform Maretime Bay's government using knowledge from the past and all three tribes. Might even be a special rather than just an episode.
And there is approximately absolutely no way they're going to do that, let alone do it well.
"Or Hitch just pulled a Borgeson one day
"
(and regarding that video, I assume)
...I... think I'm missing a... lot of context?
"Well Sprout was elected to supplant any assumed official."
He was?
And that doesn't mean the previous incumbent(s) couldn't endorse or oppose him.
...And I don't understand what you mean by this video, sorry.
"Except when he's not... what?
"
Or this.
"Well, technically, they aren't in charge, they've just the Alpha's."
Or... this? Sorry, I seem to be having difficulty understanding you tonight.
"You could argue Haven is, but hers seems a more titular and honorary title then anything."
Ehh... does it? We don't see any other government, and if we admit data from the YouTube series, she has a fair bit of paperwork to do and duties to discharge, IIRC.
"Also Alphabittle seems to be in charge solely because he's not a sad sack and actually has an attention span, which is as good a means as determining ability towards governance as any I suppose
"
...Yes? There's nothing in that line I find confusing, but I feel like I'm missing something about what it was supposed to mean in context... Sorry.
5692353
Oh, you're welcome, and thanks. :)
5693500
Agreed, but its one heck of a indicator. One wouldn't expect Chief Mechanic to perform ones colonoscopy after all.
Well, thats her job. Her name is Silver Script, I believe. And again, her title is Mayor, so one expects her to do mayor thing
Again though, Sherrif has a very clear definition, by and large. As such his duties are pretty cut and dry.
Or he just declared himself as such and no one wanted the job, who knows
Personally I want them to explore what his job actually means. Like the girls finding out that even though he does have authority over them, which they have to respect, it doesn't mean he's a bully or that they can't be friends
For all we know Hitch just said he was sheriff and it was so. Thats what I meant
Well, maybe not officially, but most seemed to have agreed that he was allowed to put on a stupid outfit and act like a authoritarian fuckwit, so thats as close to voting as one gets
Sprouts dictatorship was forestalled by parental disapproval. Taking the dick from dictatorship we can thus say he was cock blocked.
You have brought this painful pun upon yourself
Well, in the case of uni and mud horses, it seems that theirs are less ponies who run things in a official capacity then those who are the oldest and most experienced and as such are the most trusted and act as arbiters and advisors. They have as much authority as allowed then any ability to enforce penalty by law, acting more like church deacons then officials, if that makes sense.
Or its something like the English royalty where they technically have power but don't use it by and large
Well, him and Izzy seem to be the only one not subsumed by a depressive malaise due to a lack of magic, and since Izzy is a sperg, it fell upon the altacocker to make sure his fellows actually took time from their busy lives of being miserable to actually eat and drink.
5693542
"
"Agreed, but its one heck of a indicator. One wouldn't expect Chief Mechanic to perform ones colonoscopy after all.
Yes, but it's not as if there aren't some notable exceptions.
"Well, thats her job. Her name is Silver Script, I believe. And again, her title is Mayor, so one expects her to do mayor thing"
Whose name? Is that another name for Mayor Mare? If so, then... yes. She's the mayor. Her title wasn't really what I was talking about? I'm confused, sorry, I think, and I'm in a hurry at the moment but wanted to finally reply to this comment.
"Again though, Sherrif has a very clear definition, by and large. As such his duties are pretty cut and dry."
...If the de jure definition matches de facto reality, yes. And that's assuming the de jure definition itself hasn't shifted.
"Or he just declared himself as such and no one wanted the job, who knows"
Maybe, I guess?
...I feel like we might be talking past each other somehow.
"Personally I want them to explore what his job actually means."
That could be interesting, aye.
(Doing these next two out of order.)
"it doesn't mean he's a bully or that they can't be friends"
Don't they already know that, though?
"Like the girls finding out that even though he does have authority over them, which they have to respect"
Hm. How much do they actually have to respect his authority? We don't know what exactly Maretime Bay's laws on the matter are, and the only one who at least was a citizen by virtue of birth is now at least sort of an alicorn... which might muddy the waters. Then there's the fact that two of the girls are not just foreigners but foreign royalty, and the question of how that plays into things...
"For all we know Hitch just said he was sheriff and it was so. Thats what I meant"
Ah, okay; thanks. So, basically, the idea that there isn't actually an official, or at least currently recognized as active, position of sheriff at all; Hitch just declared himself such and... privately funded his equipment and the like?
"Well, maybe not officially, but most seemed to have agreed that he was allowed to put on a stupid outfit and act like a authoritarian fuckwit, so thats as close to voting as one gets
"
...So... proposing the idea that Maretime Bay doesn't have formal elections, and the replacement of popularly-approved/selected officials via popularly-backed coups is normal? I guess that's possible?
"Sprouts dictatorship was forestalled by parental disapproval. Taking the dick from dictatorship we can thus say he was cock blocked.
You have brought this painful pun upon yourself
"
O...kay? But what did you mean? Or, wait, was "Except when he's not" about him being elected to supplant any assumed official? But, if so, it's just his mother stopping him there, isn't it? So under that view, wouldn't he actually still have been elected? And I still don't know what the "what?" was meant to mean...
"Well, in the case of uni and mud horses, it seems that theirs are less ponies who run things in a official capacity then those who are the oldest and most experienced and as such are the most trusted and act as arbiters and advisors. They have as much authority as allowed then any ability to enforce penalty by law, acting more like church deacons then officials, if that makes sense."
Is this particularly distinct from my hypothesis that Alphabittle's the Big Stallion of Bridlewood? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the Big Man System?
(And while I suppose Maretime Bay could run on a similar system, it still at least looks likely to be more formally structure in some way or another to me.)
"Or its something like the English royalty where they technically have power but don't use it by and large"
I mean, maybe, but, as I said, if I remember correctly, they do in fact seem to be using power... or at least doing something...
"Well, him and Izzy seem to be the only one not subsumed by a depressive malaise due to a lack of magic, and since Izzy is a sperg, it fell upon the altacocker to make sure his fellows actually took time from their busy lives of being miserable to actually eat and drink."
Ah. Thank you for explaining what you meant there.
I don't know, I still really feel like there's some disconnect in this conversation, though.