Analysis Is Magic
Friday, November 8, 2013
Angel Bunny
"Hurricane Fluttershy" is an excellent example of what I mean about how Angel is frequently depicted as being in a caretaker role for Fluttershy. He's tremendously kind and supportive toward her throughout the episode, taking the lead of the animals trying to comfort her as she struggles with her PTSD. In isolation to this episode, it's quite heartwarming... unfortunately, in combination with episodes like "Putting Your Hoof Down," it just makes his relationship with Fluttershy feel even more like an abusive relationship--abusers can often be quite supportive and caring when they're happy, since this increases their victims' dependency on them and helps assuage any guilt they may feel over their abusive behavior when unhappy--it allows the abuser (and, frequently, bystanders) to treat the abuse as a momentary aberration brought on by extreme circumstances, rather than a pattern.
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I recall (but can't find the quote, dangit) Jackson Publick saying about Venture Bros. that he just had his characters do whatever he needed them to do to make a joke work, and that if so doing contradicted a previously established character trait, he called it "character development" and let the viewers reconcile the change.
ReplyDeleteAngel, and to a lesser extent Spike, illustrate the problem with letting secondary characters be whatever they need to be for a given episode: after two seasons of this, those characters invariably come across as unstable jerks.