Evil Be Thou My Good, or Why Dirk Strider Is Literally Satan

Homestuck was a Gnostic story. The Homestuck Epilogues are a satanic one. Dirk Strider is the devil. To understand, we'll have to consult a poet who's of the devil's part: John Milton.

Fluttershyness is Nice

Shyness is nice and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life you'd like to

I don't think that there's any particular contradiction between aiming a particular narrative at a younger audience and still imparting a slightly more complex, nuanced message, or in transcending the rote lessons that so many children's shows fixate upon. Generally speaking, I think this idea is getting generally accepted by writers on the better children's shows (and it's long been accepted by the best writers of children's stories, of course). Still, it's always wonderful to see a really well put together narrative with a nuanced treatment of what could otherwise be a quite trite issue.

And is there anything more rote, any lower-hanging fruit, than "character deals with stage fright?"

There's probably a few things, but it's got to be in the bottom ten at the very least, to the point where I remember getting quite sick of such episodes when I was a kid. The narratives are straightforward: character admits to having stage fright, zie has to go on stage anyway, zie learns that being on stage isn't so bad after all and sometimes you need to just face your fears head-on to fix them!

But look at the lesson, as relayed by Fluttershy, at the end of the My Little Pony episode "Filli Vanilli:

"Sometimes, being afraid can stop you from doing something that you love, but hiding behind these fears means you're only hiding from your true self. It's much better to face those fears so you can shine and be the best pony you can possibly be."

What a breath of fresh--wait, that's pretty much the usual cliche, isn't it?

In fact, it's a message that actually bothers me a lot, because there's an implicit character judgment in this message, a sense that someone's admission of discomfort or fear is this "hiding from your true self," a deliberate self-hindrance. Taken to extremes it implies that those suffering from more extreme anxieties generating their feelings all on their own, and they can just get over it if they really wanted to.

But I don't think that the message the show claims to be offering is the one that they're actually offering. In fact, I think this episode does a good job of illustrating how a stated moral might be belied by the actual content of a text--in other words, a text can say "This is the message of this story," and we as readers can say, "Yeah, but this that these and those elements of the story directly contradict this claim!" Famously, we could say, just like Blake does, that when Milton writes Paradise Lost and sets out a full explanation of why Satan is an evil, fallen being and God is right to cast him down, he actually ends up writing a story way more sympathetic to Satan than anything else. He is a poet, says Blake, and is of the Devil's part with out knowing it.

This episode, like Milton, is taking another stance (although I think everyone involved is quite aware of the text's implications!) and it's worth shedding some light on just what makes this narrative so different from the norm, what it's really teaching us, and how structurally that lesson is conveyed.

And I think the best way to do so is to frame the lesson not through Fluttershy's moral, but through a song by The Smiths.

My Little Morrissey: Sadness is Magic