How would you have rewritten the characters of g4, given the chance?
(Not mean I just love to read this kind of opinion and I love ur writing)
In honor of me talking about cartoons at length recently, here’s a really fun prompt I got in my inbox several months back about G4 of My Little Pony, which I never answered because I had so many ideas I didn’t know where to start! Thank you for asking this, anon, if you’re still following this blog, this was super fun to think about!!
Alright, so firstly, I'd decide on a more specific direction/'vibe' for the overall story than what the canon went for. The canon had a difficult time balancing trying to be a marketable My Little Pony reboot with also trying to be a Cool Story For Cool Babies, resulting in an inconsistent tone, inconsistent characterization, comedy that clashed with its themes, and meandering worldbuilding.
Based on interviews with the crew, I'm assuming the network requested 1. that the show should be themed around friendship and 2. that there should be an element of magic and adventure, while still sticking relatively close to a slice of life format.
With that in mind, I would have chosen to have each episode center around one or two characters facing a specific dilemma and learning from it with help from their friends. Worldbuilding elements like magic, monsters and epic quests would have provided the fun, flashy parts of the narrative, while the characters themselves would be played more seriously and realistically. I would put more effort into making all the characters - including minor and background characters - come off as caring, well-intentioned, intelligent and capable of growth. I would want to portray the main characters especially as people children could look up to and see themselves in. For any show that tries to teach viewers lessons (especially those for young viewers), I think it's doubly important to write the characters as people who are actually worth imitating. The show needs to treat the characters with respect.
I’d also tackle a decent amount of Political Themes(tm), which I understand might seem unrelatable to the young target demographic, but I don’t actually think they would have to be? I remember a lot of shows from when I was very young that taught about stuff like classism in a way that was easy to understand and easy to relate to. I honestly think it’s healthy to inform kids about this stuff from a young age, it doesn’t have to be complicated or super nuanced, just introducing them to certain ideas and themes can do wonders for their development. Politics affect kids too, they deserve to understand what’s happening to them.
With that in mind, this is how I'd approach each of the main characters:
Twilight Sparkle - For Twilight, I would hone in on her lack of experience with having friends and try to write her as wish fulfillment for neurodivergent kids who feel lonely. Instead of simply having been too caught up in her studies to make friends, I would write her as a former victim of bullying due to her own neurodivergence, who ended up convincing herself that she didn't need friends anyway and that she was too smart to hang out with regular people in the first place, as a defense mechanism. Upon growing closer with the rest of the cast during the pilot episodes, she would have to face the fact that she never really wanted to be alone and was just trying to shield herself from being rejected again. From then on, she would decide to try to learn how to be a good friend, despite her lack of social know-how. Overall, I would write her as more shy, reserved and insecure, seeming a bit cold, snarky and occasionally standoffish on the surface, but actually being a deeply caring and thoughtful person underneath. Many of her focus episodes would be about daring to be vulnerable with her friends, learning how to take better care of her own self-esteem, and learning how to communicate her unique boundaries and needs to her friends in a healthy way.
Spike - I would revamp Spike's role and personality completely. In order to avoid all the weird ambiguity surrounding his job and his relationship with Twilight (is she his boss? his sister? his mom? why does this small child have a job and no real parental supervision?), I'd have him be an adult dragon who merely shrunk down to his current size after being de-powered. In his prime, he was a powerful villainous dragon that Celestia defeated, and working for Twilight is him doing community service. He would essentially serve as a comedic personification of Twilight's own worst impulses, always arguing in favor of acting selfishly and pushing others away. Through Twilight bickering with him, the viewer would see her thought process when making decisions, showing that she still has a lot of baggage to work through and that it's still an active choice for her to reach out to others instead of isolating herself out of fear. Her budding friendship with Spike would also be a sort of safe space for her to vent her more unproductive feelings to someone whose opinion she doesn't initially care about.
Applejack - Even though AJ’s always been my favorite character in theory, I think she would need a major overhaul in order to be as dynamic as the other characters. Since earth ponies and their connection to nature was underutilized in g4, I’d make her uniquely skilled at understanding natural environments, even among earth ponies. Unlike canon AJ, I’d stress her fiery temper and strong sense of justice more, making her more naturally empathetic and passionately invested in making the world a better place. She would be more stern and to the point than most ‘mom friend’ type characters, but just as warm-hearted. Her focus episodes would reveal that although she loves her family deeply and values tradition very much, her magical powers growing stronger with age has caused her to butt heads with her family more and more. As AJ has grown to understand the local ecology in a way her family hasn’t been able to before, she has learned that the farming practices her family has been using for generations are inefficient and damaging to their environment, and though it pains her to disrespect older family members, she’s more committed to exposing the truth than to keeping the peace. She would have to learn how to navigate her own mixed feelings on the issue, and her friends would have to learn how to support her in the ways she needs. With writers from the appropriate backgrounds, I think the show could have helped spread information about decolonizing farming practices. This also could have been an opportunity to redo the "protagonists meet characters coded as Native American" plotline in a way that was accurate and respectful instead of what we got.
Pinkie Pie - Having a severe case of youngest-sibling-syndrome, Pinkie would be both a sweetheart and a chronic rebel. She would be a stubborn optimist and a proud eccentric, always putting 110% into making other people feel loved and free to be themselves. Before the beginning of the story, she would feel a little stuck in her role as the life of the party, always happily cheering others on, while having a difficult time admitting to her own doubts and insecurities. Growing closer with the rest of the group over the course of the pilot episodes would help her feel safe enough to start showing her hidden sides as well. In general, I would portray her as secretly being very clever and sneaky, despite seeming airheaded at first glance. Her focus episodes would see her learning to balance the give-and-take in her relationships better, as well as learning how to handle complicated feelings when all she really wants is to be happy and have a good time. In this version of the show, where the character comedy is toned down a lot, Pinkie would be promoted to primary comic relief character, and her jokes would be considered funny in-universe too.
Rainbow Dash - Rainbow would be a foil to Twilight, being another example of someone who's had a difficult time in the past and become socially maladjusted as a result. Unlike Twilight, however, Rainbow would already be ride-or-die for the few friends she has at the beginning of the show, being the type of person who might generally be crude, unpredictable and quick to anger, but who you can always rely on in a crisis. In this version, she's more of a troublemaking delinquent, mostly being into sports because the exercise helps her focus on something else than her feelings. Her focus episodes would unravel the source of her mood swings, delving into her past and exploring a difficult home life leading to her choosing to cut ties with her family. She would have to learn to take responsibility for how her behavior affects others and learn healthier coping mechanisms. Over the course of the show, she would become much better adjusted, growing more friendly and cheerful. Hopefully, the character would be relatable to troubled kids at risk of becoming bullies, who would be presented with a different way of handling destructive feelings.
Rarity - Rarity would be an artist in many different fields in this version, being an artist, writer and poet on top of also being a fashion designer. She descended from a snobbish, classist rich family who funded her extensive education in the arts, among many other fields, but completely failed to teach her normal life skills, as they believed things like cooking and cleaning should be done by servants. Upon becoming an adult and traveling the country, Rarity realized how little she truly knew about the world despite her numerous skills, as well as how her upbringing had tainted her view of other people. Deciding enough was enough, she moved to Ponyville in order to connect with others, learn how to take care of herself and share with others what her privileged life had unfairly given to only her. Her focus episodes would be about her learning to overcome her own vices, her insecurities about whether she is doing enough to help others, learning to use her unique skillset to benefit her community and her conflicts with her parents over the direction she’s chosen in life. She would be portrayed as deeply caring, fiercely determined and humble about everything except her own good looks, but also as rude without meaning to be out of ignorance, unused to not getting what she wants whenever she wants it, and greatly lacking in anything resembling self restraint. She would also frequently be used as comedy relief.
Fluttershy - This version of Fluttershy would be more mysterious and introverted. Aside from the fact that she’s been friends with Rarity for many years, her past is shrouded in mystery and she prefers to keep it that way. A long time ago, she decided that she wasn’t fit for living with others and moved out into her cottage to be alone with her animal friends, and though she decides to invest energy into making friends with the rest of the main characters upon getting to know them, she still spends much of her time by herself and is happy that way. In this version of the show, it would be made more clear that her kind, caring nature is a result of her knowing what it’s like to feel like the world is a cold and lonely place, and she would be much better at guarding herself against those who would take advantage of her forgiving nature. Instead of being played as socially awkward and a nervous wreck, she instead comes off as enigmatic and at times overly formal, using social niceties as a crutch to get her through social situations. Her focus episodes would delve into her learning the ins and outs of engaging with people very different from herself, dealing with social burnout from getting in over her head in social situations too quickly, and generally getting used to having a more active social life again. However, she would be the character who changed the least over the course of the show, as she’s already happy with her life at the beginning of the story and mostly just needs to learn social skills in order to get along with her new friends.
The whole group would be portrayed as intensely devoted and caring towards each other, and while there would be some amount of drama between the characters because of clashing personal problems, it would be very deliberately balanced out by external forces frequently driving the plot and the characters helping each other resolve their issues instead. By the time I stopped watching the series, I was wondering why these characters were even friends anymore since they never seemed to get a long - instead showing the characters learning how to help each other with outside problems I think would remedy that.