sgatazmy

First, I think I only have 2 or 3 people who read this page so I keep forgetting to come back. I really would love to build community again so if anyone you know likes Steven Universe, My Little Pony, Stargate SGA, Red Dwarf, etc appreciates gen, and would be good for me to friend, please feel free to send them my way.

On to the point of this post:

The kids and I (and several adults) went to see My Little Pony and loved it. Upon our return we started talking about the movie and I discovered something: One of the moral dilemmas was not as clear cut for the kids as it was for myself. For once the message the show hoped to send was so well framed in reality that my kids came to the opposite conclusion!

Any attempts to talk about this moral conundrum are usually met with eye rolls and grunts of despair. So while the movie framed a great talk for me to have with my kids, my kids refuse to have this talk. In specific, my 7-year-old says it distresses her to talk about these things and cannot explain why. She says she doesn't know how to have these conversations.

So I realized there was only way to reach a kid who will read any My Little Pony book set in front of her. I need to put the discussion in writing. So, much to my shock and amusement, I am up early to write pony fanfic.

So what is the moral dilemma? The following is cut for spoilers and is written on the assumption you don't really know My Little Pony very well:

Twilight is told at the beginning of the movie that the most important part of being a princess is keeping her people safe. She takes this to heart when Equestrian's fate lies in the balance and she discovers a magical pearl could help save everypony (who are currently enslaved by the Storm King). The trouble is the pearl belongs to an ally race who needs it for their own protection and they will not share it. So Twilight, completely failing to see that their civilization's fate is just as important as Equestria's fate, devises a plan to steal the pearl.

I admit, at first I gasped when I realized what she was going to do. Twilight has made some bad decisions when anxious and over-stressed, but I'd never seen her consider stealing before. This is all the worse because stealing from the allies could be so dangerous and lead to the destruction of the allies! The movie makes it clear that her travels in the movie have somehow gotten to Twilight and she sees this world where things are darker and you just have to take care of you and not concern yourself with others. What works in ponyville doesn't work in the rest of the world and she has to change or fail. It's really tragic because Twilight has never thought like this before! This is made all the worse by her not telling her friends her plan (who certainly wouldn't go along with it). She instead uses them as distraction, taking advantage of their trust in her.

The movie actually plays this out well. Right when the allies are being convinced to help, Twilight is caught in the act of stealing. The allies, who could have proven helpful in their fight against the Storm King, immediately kick them out of their home and leave the ponies to their own devices. The friends, in realizing Twilight used them as distraction, are furious with her. They realize she made them complicit in something they all know is very wrong. There is arguing in which Twilight yells something like, "Maybe I just don't need friends like you!" with her horn sparkling dangerously from anger. The friends react about as well as I can teach my kids to react in that situation. Pinkie Pie says, "I just can't talk to you right now," and they leave her alone for a while. After a while they decide it's time to talk to her, but true to the trope, Twilight has been kidnapped while they were away.

So the show does a good job of fallout from this bad decision. They lose their ally and her friends are hurt by what they see as a betrayal of their friendship. The bad guy sings a song about how we're all best on our own and Twilight realizes that friendship didn't betray her, she betrayed friendship. True, however, to My Little Pony, the friends still pull through for her and forgive her. As Rainbow Dash says, "Friends mess up sometimes." They forgive her and they help her, but they also make it clear that there will be more discussion later for them to work it all out. We never get to see that discussion but I'm glad the movie makes it clear there will be some.

So I walk away from all of this thinking the movie did such a great job showing why Twilight was in the wrong. However, in discussing this with my kids, the answer is not so clear for them. My eldest child says that Twilight had a duty to Equestria as their princess and had to save them. She needed to steal the pearl so of course she was going to try. She stopped discussing it with me after that but I get the idea she doesn't even understand why Twilight's friends were mad at her for trying to do so or how using them as a distraction without their knowing was also wrong. My youngest thinks Twilight should have stolen the pearl just because she wanted to and it is fun. Not quite what the movie was going for...

So now I have to figure out how to make a fic about all of this...