ThunderBunny wrote:And the thought that their elements are the things they struggle with works for RD and somewhat for Rarity, but AJ, Fluttershy, Twilight, and Pinkie are all pretty good at their elements. --unless I am misinterpreting what you mean by "struggle."
Applejack struggles with honesty all the time. Just last week we had an entire episode that was
all about Applejack struggling with honesty. Honesty is Applejack's element, but one of her major recurring character flaws is that she has a hard time admitting or sometimes even acknowledging the truth when she thinks it'll make things more difficult for her friends and family. Leap of Faith is one example, but it comes up in plenty of other places, like The Last Roundup (where she refuses to tell her friends the truth) or even Applebuck Season (which she spends lying to herself).
As for the other three, Twilight seems to pretty thoroughly be the most magic magic who ever magicked, but with Pinkie and Fluttershy we've definitely seen some uglier sides that work against their elements. Pinkie is the element of laughter, but her happy-go-lucky "I want to see all my friends smile!" attitude isn't as stable as it seems; the Party of One breakdown is the most obvious and dramatic demonstration of her psychosis, but there's an underlying fear of abandonment that shines through even in other episodes (Pinkie Pride, for example, where she's afraid her friends won't love her if she isn't the best at parties). Pinkie doesn't just love to see her friends smile, she
needs to see them smile, because she's afraid that if everybody isn't happy all the time they'll suddenly realize they hate her and leave her behind.
And Fluttershy, for all her timidity and lack of self-confidence, has a real mean streak. This is probably one of the more underexplored aspects of her character, even compared to Pinkie's fear of abandonment, but it's there. Most of her episodes end up focusing on her more obvious surface-level anxieties, and "YOU'RE GOING TO LOVE ME" aside, the biggest, most obvious moment we have is the way she tears down Rarity and Pinkie in Putting Your Hoof Down. Fluttershy acts like a real dick the entire time she's "assertive," but in that one moment more than anywhere else she's absolutely
vicious. It's the most unkind, mean-spirited, just plain
cruel kind of dressing down you could give anybody (let alone your friends), and she laser-targets Pinkie and Rarity's flaws and insecurities in a way that goes a lot deeper than just casual meanness. Fluttershy can make those kinds of devastating criticisms because
she's always had those thoughts. She's always noticed her friends' flaws, the things that they're scared of, the ugly parts of themselves they try not to acknowledge, and somewhere in the back of her mind she's judging them for it. Not consciously, not intentionally-- we see time and time again that she cares a lot for her friends, and that's true no matter how aware she is of their flaws-- but there's a little voice in the back of her head that's really nasty and unfair, and I think on some level she knows it. I actually get the sense that Fluttershy's super-quiet, shy (durr) personality is at least in part
because of that meanness; she hates to hurt people's feelings, so she judges herself just as-- probably even more-- harshly than she judges everyone else and retreats into a little self-conscious bubble where she never wants to say anything even the slightest bit impolite in case she might hurt somebody. Fluttershy's scared of a lot of things, but I would go so far as to suggest that maybe what she's really scared of more than anything is
herself.
Think all the way back to the Return of Harmony for a moment, and I'll leave you with a suggestion: Discord didn't change those little ponies quite so much as you might think.
Last edited by Weird Autumn on Tue Apr 08, 2014 2:45 am, edited 5 times in total.