My Little Pony: Friendship Never Ends

[osprey_archer]

My friend Becky got me into the new My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic a few years ago, and I’ve been watching in a desultory sort of way since then. It’s a good comfort show: there may be tribulations in Equestria, but you know it will all come right in the end. The ponies may squabble but their friendships will never end.

But I’m nearing the end of season 6 now and I’m running out of steam on it. The episodes have lost some of their zing (maybe the writers are running low on friendship lessons they can illustrate in 23 minutes or less?), and I’m starting to disagree with more of the friendship lessons, which as those lessons are often explicitly spelled out at the end of the episode is difficult to ignore.

In particular, this happens every time there’s an episode with Discord, who is, well, the personified spirit of Discord. He was an antagonist in an earlier season and now he’s become a friend, sort of.

He’s a terrible friend. He throws temper tantrums when his favorite pony Fluttershy hangs out with other people, and he shows up at parties where he’s not invited specifically to ruin them by, say, summoning up flood to fill the whole ballroom, and he invites himself to a DnD night and then complains that DnD is boring (you weren’t invited in the first place!), whisks the participants off to various activities he thinks are more fun but they have no interest in (THIS IS WHY YOU WEREN’T INVITED), and then vengefully brings the DnD game so that he can send armies of orcs to attack the players who have refused to stop playing a game they enjoy in order to entertain Discord. (The orcs may be illusory, but they’re capable of causing physical pain.)

The show is meant to teach explicit didactic lessons about relationships to six-year-olds. Surely “If one of your friends is really mean and possessive and physically hurts you if you don’t do what he wants, it’s okay to end that friendship” has to be a possibility that’s on the table, at least once every six seasons or so.

This is never the lesson. Discord always gets a 352rd chance. In Equestria, friendships never end.

Comments

[asakiyume]

One of my kids is into MLP, and I think I've seen one of those Discord episodes--and had the same reaction.

[osprey_archer]

It's such an awkward blind spot. I get why they don't do more episodes about friendships ending - it's kind of a bummer topic, you know? - but at the same time it seems like a friendship lesson a lot of kids would find useful. And especially when you've got a character like Discord, the fact that end the friendship never seems to be an option is just glaring.

[asakiyume]

Upon reflection, I think maybe they're intending to play Discord's behavior for laughs--sort of assuming it's hyperbolically bad. But the problem is that there's real-life unpleasant behavior that's pretty close to it, and so laughing it off and having everyone accept him and give him his 353rd chance does seem to suggest that people should do similar.

[osprey_archer]

I wouldn't be surprised if some kids do find it funny - there's a sort of Cat-in-the-Hattishness to the destruction sometimes. That never particularly appealed to me even as a child (I used to get so mad at Curious George in particular. Did you know there's a book where he destroys a dinosaur skeleton? A DINOSAUR. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, CURIOUS GEORGE?) but I know some kids like it.

[sovay]

This is never the lesson. Discord always gets a 352rd chance. In Equestria, friendships never end.

I've always assumed those sorts of stories are meant to reassure kids that if they're thoughtless or selfish or otherwise screw up boundaries—but apologize—their friends won't hate them forever, not that kids should tolerate supposed friends who are constantly jerks to them forever.

[osprey_archer]

I'm not sure you can tell one story without also telling the other, honestly. If a story tells kids that good friends ought to forgive them no matter how often or how badly they screw up boundaries, then the necessary corollary is "And in order to be a good friend you have to forgive your friends for everything, too."

[artemis_wandering]

That's a really good point and I always feel weird about him never learning his lesson, but I think the point is Fluttershy's development (like forgiveness and understanding of "difference")? I think it might be a season 7 episode, but there's an ep where he tries really hard to please her and things end up going chaotic as usual and in the end he sort of realizes he went overboard and they kind of compromise? I felt like that was a better ending than most of his.

But I also really love Discord and so I think I give the show more leeway with him because he wouldn't be Discord if he wasn't causing some kind of disharmony. As an adult watching, I recognize the problematic behavior, but also it hits some tropes I like so I don't hate it. But you're right, it's maybe not the best lesson for a 6 year old to take away. It makes me curious about getting reactions from kids and asking them what lesson they actually learned from those episodes. (Social survey nerd at heart, apparently.)

[osprey_archer]

I'm still in season 6, so maybe I just haven't gotten to the part where he starts to learn maybe kind of a little bit. Right now his development just seems completely stuck and if he were at least taking baby steps that would be one thing but - no. Not yet.

It does make me feel better to hear that it might be coming, though.