Discord Flanderization

[Arctofire 227]

This post has been removed due to my opinion having changed. If a moderator ever finds this long dead thread, then please lock it.

Edited March 1, 2015 by Arctofire

[remove p l e a s e ? 800]

Seems like a good explanation to me, I don't see anything to argue against this thought.

[Hive King 2,001]

@@Arctofire,

He was never threatening. He was always a kid with a machinegun who went around spraying at ant hills for the lolz. His reformation was sudden, but they seemed to be taking it seriously. Then he joined Tirek for the stupidest of reasons and then turned good within the same set of episodes 

[sweetolebob18 728]

I always felt that Discord was the Pony's answer to Q.  Not evil, exactly, just out to amuse himself & didn't care who he hurt. For him, it was always about proving he was smartest, not about gaining power.  I always felt he was just pretending to befriend Fluttershy, (or at least greatly exaggerating it)

 

For me, Discord's behavior was SO stupid as to strain the "suspension of disbelief" needed to enjoy a show.  He changed the habit of a lifetime & decided he wanted power? Well, alright if you must, but why in the world would  he need Tirek?  He's surprised Tirek turned on him? Good Lord, WHY?  Stupidest thing anyone ever did the entire series & that includes the time Pinkie went into the Dragon's lair while wearing swim fins & then Dash kicked the Dragon.

[M'gann M'orzz 745]

That's not what Flanderization is. Flanderization is when over time a character loses elements of their characterization only to have the most extreme elements amplified till they are a simple shell of what they once were. It's basically a character losing demensions over time.

Discord's reformation and what follows is character development, you can like it or dislike it but it's not remotely close to flanderization.

[LightFlicker 91]

chaos isn't exactly evil and could be good, like discord.

[Conred 274]

Well its really hard to still be mischievious and evil while also being reformed and a friend to the Element of Kindness. You cant have both. Discord can either change and join the side of good or act as his former self and get killed like Sombra or turned to stone again.

[deadprofile 1,123]

I never saw him as threat or a real villian. His very nature is choas, but does not mean his is evil. In the season 2 opener, he was toying with the Mane 6, just as he did in all episodes where he exists. I also do not think his "reformation" was sudden either. In that episode, he realized something BIG he never had before, what it's like to have a friend. That was the intial start of his reformation, but as the show points out, it was a journey for Discord (hence his character development in the Season 4 finale). Just as Applejack has to learn over and over again to overcome her stubbornness, Discord has to learn what being a friend is truly like, what friendship truly means....In that regard, Twilight Sparkle's learning of friendship is the S1 opener was extremely rushed (in less than 3 days, she went from knowing nothing about friendship to understanding the heart of what friendship entails, the same thing Discord has to learn).

IRL friendships are not something we 'get' from day one. With each new friend we make, we have to learn HOW to be friends with them, because each person is different. Our IRL knowledge of friendship is every changing as growing as we age and gain/lose friends over the course of our lifetime. EVERY person has wronged a friend, EVERY person has misunderstood a friend, and EVERY person knows what it's like to be abandoned by someone we thought was a friend. Discord is learning the we in real life learn what true friendship is like, and that is a lifelong journey of knowledge and understanding with step backs and mistakes. And post Season 1 opener, even Twilight does not escape this fact of friendship.

[Coco before Pommel 679]

That's not what Flanderization is. Flanderization is when over time a character loses elements of their characterization only to have the most extreme elements amplified till they are a simple shell of what they once were. It's basically a character losing demensions over time.

Discord's reformation and what follows is character development, you can like it or dislike it but it's not remotely close to flanderization.

 

^ Thiiiis. If anything, Discord's development is the opposite because he gained more elements of his character rather than losing existing ones. Although I guess a lot of that depends on whether you liked the development, and if not more inclined to focus on what he "lost" as the result of his redemption - presumably, being "evil" as a character trait? "Chaotic" and "mischievous" are ones I would argue he still very much has, he's just learning - and it's definitely an ongoing process - to express them differently. But as others have pointed out, chaos isn't intrinsically "evil" so I don't think that is necessarily a defining character trait. It's more that, when Discord was introduced as a villain, it was probably his main(/only?) character trait, along with chaotic/mischievous, so its absence is more noticeable.

 

I'm a big fan of how Discord's character development was handled (and I seem to find myself defending it a lot lately, lol), and obviously it's cool if it doesn't work for everyone. But what I like about his reformation is that it's actually more subtle than it seems - from Return of Harmony to Keep Calm and Flutter On, yeah, he's a lot less threatening. But it makes sense in the context of the ep - the M6 can turn him back into stone at any moment if he misbehaves, so it makes far more sense for him to play along and appear less harmful, even if his motives were basically the same as in RoH (to take advantage of Fluttershy's friendship to help him get his freedom). Then we know how that ends, and I agree that if that had actually been it and Discord was totally all reformed and good from then on that would have been pretty unsatisfying. But in Princess Twilight Sparkle and Three's a Crowd, while he's not full-on evil again it becomes clear (to me, at least) that he's playing with this strange new concept of "friendship" primarily for his own gains/to entertain himself rather than actually using his powers for good like he promised at the end of Keep Calm, because that's no fun - he only helps when he feels like it in PTS, and TaC is just him trolling Twilight and Cadance in a way that won't get him turned to stone, because they're ~friends~ now! Still, along the way there are subtle little hints (mainly through Fluttershy) that he maaaybe cares more than he lets on - otherwise why would he bother helping the M6 at all, or even choose to still hang around them when there's plenty of other ponies he could annoy, which does suggest he's growing at least a little fond of them, in his own twisted way. (Getting more into headcanon territory, but I also feel like he's a little/a lot in denial of this, because pesky things like emotions get in the way of doing whatever the hell he wants and he sees that as a weakness - which is basically what Tirek uses to manipulate him in Twilight's Kingdom, so his betrayal there also made sense to me.)

 

The thing is, while RoH!Discord is an awesome villain and I'd have been perfectly happy if those eps were all we got of him, there's not exactly a lot to him as a character. His sense of humour and personality (and, let's face it, John de Lancie) make him memorable, but he doesn't have any intriguing backstory or motive for what he does other than ~for the lulz~. He's definitely evil there, and a lot of those considerable flaws remain in later eps (incredibly selfish and narcissistic, childish, manipulative) - but that doesn't mean he's incapable of emotion or caring about someone other than himself, and that's where his development comes from. Having Fluttershy treat him like a friend instead of an enemy does affect him, almost against his will, and that makes perfect sense because our relationships with others are such a huge part of who we are, and how we see ourselves as well. If you've never had someone care about you or see you as anything other than a monster (even if that reputation is entirely deserved), of course you're going to be confused by that, and maybe not know quite how to process it, but it is going to affect you in some way. (I know, I know, Discord's not human, maybe you shouldn't apply the same human psychology to him - but we do with the pony characters, and that's almost the point - he thinks himself above such petty feelings, but oops, turns out he's not after all. and that, to me, is far more interesting to watch than Generic Evil Because Evil Villain 225467) It's not flanderization - it's revealing different facets of a character through putting them in different situations, that shape their character and challenge our initial impressions of them. In other words: character development!

 

the tl;dr version: I understand Discord's redemption doesn't work for everyone, and that's totally fine. But the reasoning is there, sometimes you just have to look a little deeper to see it.

 

...sorry, sorry, I guess I just have a lot of Discord feels, okay?

[Celli 4,341]

Well, flanderizing is taking one trait and making it more apparent, so I think you're mixing words up a little there, buddy .

If you said they made him OOC in season 3 and 4, then I would have understood what you meant.

[Frostgage 7,977]

As others have said flanderization is the incorrect term. I guess it comes down to how you feel about the progression of Discord's character. Personally, I never really thought of him as evil, at least not in the cut-and-dry way King Sombra and Tirek are. I think the way he was developed makes him a really fascinating character.