Sometime in the past, I got a chance to watch the short
version of MLP: FIM the third season, and currently I am feeling more and more
confused about this show – what the hay is going on there?
Let me elaborate. All of the main villains on this version
of MLP are shapeshifters. I am talking about real villains, not one hit wonders
such as Gilda or Flim & Flam (Trixie’s return was just a nod to her
popularity among the fans, I reckon), those who usually take two
episodes to be dealt with.
Judge for yourself. Nightmare Moon (unlike Princess Luna)
seems to be mainly a being of the mist, taking on various guises – an evil alicorn,
a thorn in a manticore’s paw, a group of Shadowbolts and so on. Changing shape
and appearance was natural to her, but when she was hit by the elements of
Harmony and became Princess Luna instead, that was it. Princess Luna she has
remained and did not change her appearance once (discounting any possible
bloopers made by the show’s illustrators).
Discord is trickier. In S2 he was basically the same as
Nightmare Moon in S1, using his power to change, and not just his own shape,
but the reality around to him, save that he worked much more actively against
the Mane 6 and was more dangerous. In S3 he supposedly was redeemed, but that
episode felt rushed, and so far Discord had not been a big part of the show, so
maybe he is bidding his time before doing something that will cause him to be
petrified once more, who knows? The important thing is that he apparently cut
down on his shapeshifting too now that he is a good guy.
As a queen of the changelings, Chrysalis is no slouch at
changing her appearance, and she has not appeared in S3. Her appearance in the
comics (which I have not seen, not really), however is still that of a villain,
and not really a sympathetic one, not even by the ponies standards. She has
kept her abilities, though.
Finally, S3 had introduced King Sombra, formerly from the
Crystal Empire. He too was a shapeshifter, similar to Nightmare Moon rather
than to Discord or Chrysalis, appearing sometimes as a unicorn and sometimes as
mass of shadows. It is unknown if he kept his shapeshifting powers, but because
he has not been redeemed either, my
money’s on the positive answer in that regard.
So. When a major villain is redeemed, he or she apparently loses
the power to change, especially their shape and appearance. If they keep this power,
they remain evil (and unsympathetic) instead. That is one.
And two was the third season’s finale, when Twilight Sparkle
accidentally changed her friends’ destinies by transforming their ‘cutie marks’
into different ones, and to her apparent surprise, she found that they sucked
in their new roles, all of her friends were “one-trick ponies”, capable of
doing only one job really well, and unable to adapt their attitudes or
strategies in order to suit their new circumstances, period. Ergo, TS had to
put things exactly as they were to make everyone happy again – and then she
became an alicorn.
Now, alicorns are immortal, and at least in case of Princess
Celestia, they do not change at all. Princess Celestia, in particular, remained
as she was for at least 1000 years while her sister was on the moon and Discord
was petrified. That said, she was also apparently weaker than Discord was one
on one (as she was with Chrysalis, FYI), and she certainly kept away from NM
until the latter became Princess Luna once more and thus non-confrontational.
Could it be that by making TS into an alicorn, Celestia has made TS weaker,
magic-wise? Who knows...?
I know one thing for certain: MLP: FIM makes adaptability
and transformation look evil, shows that being a one-trick pony is a good thing
and a key to a road for happiness and stability, and has made its leading lady
into a being who is immortal and thus cannot change and become a different
being, either for better or for worse. I do not know what MLP’s message here
is, but I do not think that I like it.
Still, while forced transformations appear to be over
for TS (she did not ask to be an alicorn, you know), the heroine from
another show, i.e. Bo Jones from “Lost Girl” is not done with them yet. Right
now, “Lost Girl” is in its 3rd season as well, and Bo has ended up
in a position where she to change willingly and become a better (more powerful?)
Fae or she will transform unwillingly, into some sort of a feral creature
called an UnderFae.
Let us be frank here. I like “Lost Girl”, but still think
that it has its flaws too: the tendency to lump everything that is not human as
Fae (a succubus, for example, is not a faerie, but a demon – a completely
different being) is one of them. (Well, except for the Naga and the Garuda from
S2, but they are a very different topic.)
Yet I find S3 of “Lost Girl” particularly disappointing.
Firstly, it is obvious that by the end of it Bo will break-up with Dr. Lauren
(breaking the hearts of half of her fandom in the process) and ship-up with
Dyson. Personally, I do not have anything against Dyson, but still, it is only
Bo’s species (succubus vs. vampire) that make this something short of a cliché,
where the hero gets the girl – this diminishes not just Bo and her relationship
with Lauren, but also Dyson as well.
And the diminishment of Dyson has one more dimension, tied
to the rest of the S3. In the 2nd season, “Lost Girl” really began
to develop aspects of Dyson’s character, his past, and also - the Celtic
elements of the show. “Lost Girl” began to really go somewhere... but now this
tendency has been abandoned in favor of the Fae creatures all over the world –
Greek Amazons, Hindu Rakshasas, Slavic Poludnicas, and so on, and the same can
be said about Dyson’s back story: it has been abandoned as well, a great pity
in my opinion.
Therefore, to add injury to insult, on top of those disappointing
developments, there is Bo’s forced transformation: no matter what Mr. Trick
tells Bo, even if she does evolve into someone more powerful, she will not be
her old self anymore – and Bo has accepted that. She does not try to discover
anything, any way to get herself out of this mess, she just goes on wherever
Mr. Trick leads her, and any arguments between them are basically reduced to
childish tantrums on Bo’s part, with everyone involved knowing fully that she
will do as asked, she just needs to vent first. That is character diminishment
as well as a transformation of Mr. Trick into someone who runs more and more of
Bo’s life – probably not a good thing either.
Anyways, before this becomes a full-blown rant (or a
criticism) of “Lost Girl”, let me conclude that both it and MLP: FIM seem to
have diminished in their 3rd seasons, the latter by continuing to
claim that transformation is bad, stability is good (think Orwell’s sheep), and
the former by forcing their main heroine into a no-choice situation and by
having her go against everything that she stood for in the process.
