OK, that's just stupid. I heard some radicals in Quebec were nutty, but language police?

That's sounds mildly bigoted to be honest.

Quebec's relationship with english Canada, especially when it comes to language is... complicated. It's the only part of Canada that actually speaks french primarily, and the result is that certain political parties in Quebec feel that french is 'threatened' and need to 'defend' it.

My opinion on this is a bit biased, as I'm from the prairies, where the general opinion on Quebec is that they are, in more or less words, obstructive petulant twits who demand unique rights at every opportunity and tend to get them by virtue of everyone else wanting them to shut up. This isn't accurate, or at least not wholly accurate - there's certainly no denying that they have a very different system, such as the language police itself, and the Parti Quebecois definitely pushes for it - the major platform of the PQ being the separation of Quebec from Canada, and in general standing up for 'Quebec's rights'. But at the same time one needs to understand that Quebec is basically a french colony that was annexed into the rest of Canada, despite being established well before the english showed up, so they do have some historical reason for resentment. Really though, at least here in Montreal most agree that they take it way to far.

TL;DR: The PQ is in power and they're really defensive of french rights and culture, and so tend to push as far in the other direction as they can.

Oh, it's entirely bigoted. It's reactionary bigotry, but it's still bigotry. Every so often you hear of something like a train employee grabbing someone and wailing on them while screaming "Go back to your own country" for speaking english.

They're not technically a police force; they're job is just to make sure french has proper representation in quebec... but they've kinda overflexed their muscles and wound up with the ability to push english out entirely, if they so choose. There's a certain amount of francization that must be done for a company to come to Quebec.

edited 14th Jun '13 2:23:25 PM by kegisak

Okay, that's just dumb. I'm all for preserving culture, but if someone doesn't want to take part, they shouldn't have to.

The Quebec Secret Language Police, champions of The True Frenchman fallacy?

As if any culture is superior or better in anyway than any other? I'll never understand ideology.

What's particularly odd is there's no real danger of it, because they actually have systems that do a very good job of keeping their culture proper anyways - there are any number of services that offer french lessons, and in Montreal at least there are so many festivals nobody has a chance to get in any other culture. It's packed to the gills with it.

Anyways, I'll be off for the next five hours at least, so to be sure I haven't misrepresented the province, I do want to say that, for the most part, Quebec is not at all bad. There are radicals, yes, but for the most part it's really not an issue - they voted against secession, after all. The PQ is just in power now(By virtue of being the lesser of two evils - most of Quebec is very catholic and the opponent this term was a pot-smoking homosexual liberal, so...), and like any party that represents the interests of a single region, they tend to be very slightly mad.

it's not about better - it's about not wanting to lose their culture. They don't ultimately consider it better or worse, in general, just that it's theirs.

edited 14th Jun '13 2:34:16 PM by kegisak

Well I was just going to say we've had silly nonsense like that here too but let's not get boiled down into politics.

I wanted to have a lot more of my fic done today but once again real life says no, you aren't writing. It's OK though because I've uncovered so many weaknesses while doing it I need to come at it from a different angle.

Quebec rejected a homosexual liberal stoner for office?

Tell him to get over here! We need a Prime Minister who spends most of his time off his tits. He'll do much better than the three main parties.

I don't consider any of the above descripters a bad thing in the slightest, as it tells me nothing about his plans, ideas, or policies.

"Liberal" can describe policies, but yeah, I'd be way more concerned with what he's going to do in office rather than what his personal lifestyle is. He could eat nothing but fried chicken and purple drank for all I care; just so long as he doesn't tank the economy or implement any stupid policies.

Oh, hey no one seems to be here. This sounds like the perfect opportunity to post my last and longest analysis.

Seriously though, I hope people have liked this at least a little. I might do some other things for other characters, but I don't know.

Twilight Sparkle

As the main protagonist of the series, Twilight has more combined screen time and character focus than any other character in the series. As such it’s pretty easy to assume that she has had the most character development of any character in the series, and some ways she has. However, looking at Twilight’s character arc I can’t help but find her overall development from the beginning to the end of the series to be rather strange. I’ll go into why I feel that way in more detail as I continue on, but while I am still quite confused as to why her development occurred the way it did but I did find a rather interesting theme to Twilight’s arc. Twilight, for all of her desire to learn about things including friendship, she is very slow to learn things from her own flaws or mistakes. Now I understand that this doesn’t sound like something that is particularly surprising or even unique to Twilight but as we look through Twilight’s character arc I think you will understand why I point this out with her.

When we are first introduced to Twilight Sparkle in the pilot episode she is very different than the one we follow throughout the series. In the pilot she is very studious, no non-sense, snarky, and asocial. Some of these character aspects would remain (studious being the most obvious) but others would be quickly cast by the wayside in favor of other aspects that would fit the shows direction much better. Where she was once snarky and asocial, she becomes social and more awkward. Where she was more goal-oriented and messy, she becomes detail-oriented and organized (this will become important later), and where she once seemed casual with Princess Celestia she became more deferential and fearful of her (this will also be important later). Some of these things develop naturally as the first season progresses, others are introduced as the season goes on and by the late first season we have a protagonist that has already changed quite a bit from her (not so) humble origins.

Now it was established in the first episode that she remains in Ponyville so that she can learn about friendship, which she does . . . sort of. The strange thing is that while she writes all of the friendship reports in the first season she very rarely rights about things that she directly learned for herself, most of what she writes about is problems her friends and others had to deal with or things that the rest of the group had to deal with together (and in the case of Dragonshy and Bridle Gossip she was already kind of in the right anyway). Even in episodes like Winter Wrap Up, where she supposedly learns about team work, she does so by solving a problem that the entire town was having and any failure on her part was rendered irrelevant. The only episode where she actually learns anything directly from another pony or because of her own failure is Feeling Pinkie Keen, which is a rather interesting since it’s probably the last episode where we see her more haughty characterization from the pilot. The fact that she doesn’t face a lot of personal challenge or consequences, likely has to do with her role as the leader and guiding force of the Mane Six, which is a bit odd considering she’s the one supposed to be learning. While the pattern of her development and learning does provide some explanation for her changes from early in season one to late season one, what comes next is more than little harder to explain.

Lesson Zero is the first episode in season two to star Twilight, and it’s probably one of her (and the show in general’s) most important episodes, though not really for positive reasons. The first season was not only building Twilight as a leader but also as a pony who was extremely organized, academically focused, and not always the best situations that involve Celestia, but this episode takes those aspects, cranks them up to eleven and adds an unhealthy dose of neuroses. It’s probably one of the few episodes where one can genuinely call one of the characters sanity into question as well as her ability to lead the rest of the Mane Six (or anything for that matter). Honestly it’s a character development that I really don’t understand. While the aspects were not completely absent in Twilight’s character to develop into what we see in this episode, I can’t see how they became so extreme in such a short amount of time. I’ve seen some theorize that it is the left over effects of her dealing with Discord in the last episode, but frankly I don’t feel she suffered any worse than any of the others and their characters did not suffer such a radical shift in character. It frankly feels less like character evolution and more like character mutation, so to speak. What’s worse from a character perspective is that despite the damage she wrought she ultimately did not have to accept responsibility for her actions. Celestia was sympathetic enough with her concerns and her friends were more than willing to accept the blame that the episode ends up enabling more of this behavior from Twilight, which is reflected in the rest of the season. While she does still perform her leadership role throughout season two, Lesson Zero frankly makes it less believable then it was in season one, especially with all of the allusions to obsessive compulsive nature. I can somewhat accept it though since she, as I implied in the beginning, she is much better at dealing with other ponies’ problems then her own. In fact her next episode, It’s About Time, has her dealing with pretty much the exact same issues. In that episode she apparently learns her lesson for real, though later episodes would suggest otherwise. The last episode that Twilight stars in is Canterlot Wedding, which while developing the relationship between her and the new characters (as well as some very odd moral priorities from her friends and Celestia) it really doesn’t do much to develop her character outside of that. So by the end of season two, Twilight, while still a leader at times, has been mostly reduced to an extreme neurotic who can’t handle or learn from any of her own problems. So the question now becomes, can Twilight hope to recover from this. The answer from season three seems to be yes, but perhaps not in the best way.

Season three was touted early on as the season of Twilight and it shows with it’s opening two-parter The Crystal Empire. At the start we see that Twilight continues to be neurotic, academically obsessed and fearful of Celestia’s judgment. She is apparently so fearful of her academic success and Celestia’s view of her that the image she see’s at the “nightmare door” has everything to do with finding out that she failed Celestia’s test and no longer being her student rather then something bad happening to her friends or family at the Crystal Empire. This is not looking good, especially since it’s made more than obvious that Celestia has something big planned for Twilight in the near future and Twilight is still having a lot of trouble dealing with her own problems.Still, she managed ignore Celestia’s “you’re the only one who can do this” statement which allowed Spike and Cadance to save the day. It honestly doesn’t sound like much when I say it like that, but with how Twilight has been the past season it’s a step in the right direction. Her next starring episode Magic Duel really doesn’t do anything in the way of character development or elaboration; however some of the episodes she has a secondary role in do actually have a few bits of character development. In Keep Calm And Flutter On she demonstrates that she actually can stand up to Celestia when she makes questionable decisions, and in Games Ponies Play she shows that she finally getting some control over her anxiety issues. All of these are good signs for Twilight Sparkle’s might actually be learning from her own mistakes and setting out to fix her flaws. And then we get to the season finale Magical Mystery Cure.

Magical Mystery Cure is a series defining episode for Twilight and one that is rife with controversy, and not without reason. It is meant to be the culmination of three seasons of character development and is meant to demonstrate that Twilight is now ready to be elevated to the same status of the other Alicorn Princesses. I am just going to come out and say that the episode failed to accomplish that goal. I say this because the event that is supposed to demonstrate her readiness is really nothing special in the grand scheme of things. Hell, it’s something she did back in Return of Harmony, in the face of a much greater conflict and higher stakes; though admittedly she needed another’s prompting to do so. And from outside the episode itself, I think I have made a fair case that Twilight is not ready for the responsibilities of being a Princess, not yet. While she has shown the ability to lead and help others, she has only recently demonstrated some ability at dealing with her own problems and flaws before she can really hope to fulfill such duties. She needs more character development before I can believe what the episode is trying to tell me, until then I think Celestia has made a big mistake in promoting Twilight before her time, and so has the writing staff for that matter.

I can agree a lot of that, but I think she's shown enough understanding and self-control that she's ready. She's had to face directly or not her biggest character flaws and has been learning to cope with her anxiety.

And surely the writers will show her struggling with her new responsibility, it would be quite unbelievable if she knew everything there was to be a princess. I think Celestia still has some lessons to teach her, but she's demonstrated the qualities Tia's looking for, not necessarily that Twi is a full equal to her. After all, she's now a novice as a princess.

Isn't Quebec the one that wants to secede for some reason?

Yup.

And btw, there's now pictures of the finalized EQG dolls.

Oh hey, nice work Mio. I have an argument against a point you made but, I'm having trouble expressing it. Mostly because, worryingly, my throat seems to be closing over. My brother had the mumps a few weeks ago and I'm worried I may have got it too...which since I've been vaccinated is particularly annoying.

@Applelight: I would ask why that is effecting your ability to type, but I guess your feeling pretty bad in general, not just your throat. I thank you for reading and offering response anyway.

@Dark: Your right that it would be unbelievable if she was already fully capable of managing a country (and whatever other things Princesses do) and I'm sure she will struggle, but I still think she needed more time before she was even at a basic level of readiness. Time will tell if that is true though.

@Mio: I basically agree with Dark, although I also don't think that Lesson Zero exaggerated her quite as much as you make it out to. The whole "what if she throws you in a dungeon in the place that she banishes you to" thing in "Bird in the Hoof" shows that she's always been a bit nuts where Celestia is concerned. I agree that it would have helped to hold her a bit more accountable for the chaos though.

As for whether or not she's ready, I think it really depends on how you interpret her current status. If you view her as being identified as a full princess at this specific point, then yeah, she's not ready. But I think it's more along the lines of simply identifying her as simply being the right kind of pony for the job, even if she hasn't fully ironed out all her issues yet. It's just a case of "you have what it takes to be a princess" rather than "You are now a princess." Getting the wings just means that she's ready to start the process, not that she's fully qualified at this very moment.

Also, it's a bit vague whether Celestia made a conscious decision that Twilight was now ready; it looks more like the elements did it and that Celestia could have not been involved and it still would have worked.

JT said what I wanted to say.

And sorry about that...it was pretty bad there. I couldn't breath at one stage.

Hi :3

@J Teeth: I never really liked that aspect of Twilight's character, I preferred the more casual relationship that the pilot implied. That aside I still think that despite the aspects being their they were exaggerated in such a way as to be nearly unbelievable.

I don't think there is any room for interpretation of her current status. She's a Princess. She was coronated and everything. She may not have any responsibilities as one at the moment, but I think it's safe to say that she is expected to take them on.

While I can't say that Celestia directly choose her and turned her into an Alicorn, it did seem pretty clear to me that she set the events in motion in anticipation that she would become one.

Noooooo

I would eat it.

Evening everypony. What's going on?

Debating the relative sanity of your newest dictator.

@Dark: Twilight has been doing quite fine thank you.