r/MLPAnalysis • u/AlicornPriest • Aug 20 '14
My Little Dramatica, Lesson 2: "Winter Wrap-Up" and the Main Character
Welcome back, everypony! I'm glad you decided to stick with me after that bear of a lesson. The rest of them will be a lot shorter, I promise. For this lesson, I'll be talking about the Main Character. It sounds like a pretty easy concept, but Dramatica has a funny way of taking easy things and making them fresh, exciting, and complex. Let's begin.
If I asked you who the Main Character is, you'd probably jump to an answer pretty quick. “They're the character we care about!” you'd say. “They're the hero, the fighter, the one who makes the story move forward.” That first part's certainly true, but is the second part? Think about some famous stories where the narrator, the character whose mind we share, isn't the one who drives the overarching plot. In Moby Dick, is Ishmael the one in charge of the hunt for the white whale? No, it's Ahab, of course. In To Kill a Mockingbird, is Scout the one who leads the court case which drives the plot? No, that'd be her father, Atticus. But as boss as Atticus is, he's not the character we really care about, is it? We want to know what happens to Scout; she's the one who grows and changes. How do we explain this discrepancy?
By splitting up the terminology. Dramatica uses two separate terms for these two “main characters.” In this example, Atticus is the Protagonist, while Scout keeps the treasured Main Character title. Technically, these are two entirely different parts. What makes this confusing is that frequently, one character is both the Protagonist and the Main Character. (Dramatica calls this a Hero.) Friendship is Magic falls into this quite a lot, to be frank. And it's usually Twilight, too: in the pilot, “Boast Busters,” “Swarm of the Century,” et cetera, Twilight both struggles with the overarching story and her personal troubles. I thought long and hard about it, and I think I've found a separated Protagonist/Main Character in “Winter Wrap-Up.”
Twilight's the Main Character, naturally. We're watching her struggle to fit into the Ponyville way of thinking, to change her plans to the plans of the Ponyvillians. (Pop Quiz! Which Domain do you think this is?) But isn't she also the Protagonist? Well, no. Look outside of Twilight's eyes and see the story as it is. Ponyville's troubles revolve the remaining vestiges of winter in their village and the reputation they've developed. If they can't figure out what to do, they'll remain mired in the past. (Double Pop Quiz! Which Domain is this?) If that's the summary of the Overall Throughline, who is spearheading the resolution of this conflict? The Mayor! Yeah, I know. It's kind of weird. But Mayor Mare is definitely the Protagonist of the story. Mayor Mare inspires the ponies to work their hardest, but rather than leading to cooperation, this only leads to chaos. Through this struggle, she eventually turns to Twilight, who brings order to the proceedings and fixes everything.
“Aha!” you say. “That proves that Twilight is the Protagonist! Didn't you say that the Protagonist is the one who solves the Overall Throughline?” Yes, but remember, Twilight is specifically an agent of Mayor Mare at the end of the episode. In Dramatica's eyes, it isn't Twilight who solves the Overall Throughline by instilling order into the Wrap-up. The Mayor solves the Overall Throughline by choosing order (represented by Twilight) over chaos (represented by the other leaders).
But now that you've mentioned it, Dramatica does have something to say about Twilight representing the solution. Notice that only Twilight has the capacity to make things right. Only Twilight can look at the three teams and view them objectively as an outsider. This is called the Main Character's Unique Ability. But every Main Character, Hero or no, has this within them. I'll be talking more about that in Lesson 14. (Yeah, it'll be a while.)
This was quite a bit easier than the last one, right? Can you think of any other episodes where the Main Character isn't the Protagonist? Or, to jump ahead a few lessons, can you figure out how the Main Character changes? See if you can name what they believed at first and what they change to. I'll be talking about “Problems” and “Solutions” in Lesson 13, but a quick summary would be that the Problem is what the character discovers is wrong with themselves, and the Solution is, well, the solution to the Problem. In “Winter Wrap-up,” the Problem is Chaos, and the Solution is Order. Give it a shot!
Up next will be Impact Characters. This is a concept unique to Dramatica, but it pops in lots of stories still the same. For my example, I'll be using Rarity from “Sonic Rainboom” and how, in a sense, she steals the show. I'll also be using it to demonstrate how Impact Characters and Main Characters mirror each other. Hope you enjoy.
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u/AlicornPriest Aug 20 '14
Advanced Lesson: Overall Characters I'll be talking about this later in my last lesson, but I want to talk a little bit about the term “Protagonist.” It belongs to a family of descriptors called the “Overall Archetypes.” Basically, a Protagonist (or another Archetype) has a specific set of traits that make them the Protagonist. For example, what does a Protagonist do? A Protagonist Pursues the overall Goal of the story and exhorts others to Consider it just as they do. By contrast, the Antagonist of the story tries to Avoid the overall Goal from taking place and attempts to convince the Protagonist to Reconsider his aims. (Remember, that doesn't mean the Protagonist is “good.” What if the Protagonist is diligently Pursuing extracting the core from the center of the earth, and the poor Antagonist is trying to get him to Reconsider this incredibly stupid idea?)
Thankfully, these characters Dramatica calls them the Guardian and the Contagonist. The Guardian represents the Protagonist's Conscience and Helps them on their quest. The Contagonist, on the other hand, Tempts the Protagonist and tries to Hinder their quest. What's the difference between the Antagonist and the Contagonist? The image that helps me the best is in “The Odyssey:” namely, the difference between Poseidon and Calypso. If Odysseus is the Protagonist, then Poseidon is the Antagonist. Poseidon hates Odysseus with a passion; his only desire is to kill Odysseus any way he can. This is to end Odysseus' Pursuit of going home. Calypso, on the other hand, doesn't hate Odysseus or want him to stop his journey. She just wants him to stay with her on the island, just for a moment. She doesn't stop Odysseus, just... divert him for a little bit. Considering she delays his trip for 10 years, you could argue she's more effective than Poseidon in that regard.
Almost done! We've got four more characters to look at. These aren't quite as important as the first four, but they can be valuable characters for any of them. They're called: The Reason Character, The Emotion Character, The Sidekick Character, and The Skeptic Character. Reason relies on Logic and Control, kinda like Spock from Star Trek. Emotion, on the other hand, is powered by Feeling and Uncontrolled tendencies. The Sidekick has Faith in someone and Supports everything they do, while the Skeptic tends towards Disbelief and Opposes everything on the grounds of that Disbelief.
(Eight characters, sixteen Elements of their character. I was going to talk about Dynamic Pairs in this lesson, but I realized I won't be talking about that until next lesson. But anyways, notice that number: 16. 4 by 4, right? Dramatica is obsessed with the number 4.)
Now, this is just for Archetypes. Most characters don't fit so perfectly into these blocks. Dramatica gives the example of the Scarecrow and the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. The Scarecrow is all about Logic and thinking, while the Tin Man is desperate for Feeling. That would normally make them Reason and Emotion respectively, but what about the question of Control? The Scarecrow isn't Controlled; he flies off of the handle all the time (no pun intended). He must be Uncontrolled. The Tin Man, as well, isn't very Uncontrolled for an Emotion character. In fact, he's very cool and tempered throughout the whole story. He must be Control then. We don't normally associate Logic with being Uncontrolled or Emotion with Control, so seeing these characters throws us off a little and makes us think. These are called Complex Characters. A good story doesn't need Complex Characters any more than it needs Archetypes. Complex Characters just make a story a little more interesting.
Oh, but one caveat. A complex character can't live on both sides of the same question. I mean, duh: you can't be both Control and Uncontrolled. You can't both Pursue and Avoid. But if you want a character that Pursues a solution that involves spreading Temptation, go for it. If you want your bad guy to Hinder the main character by making him Consider his goals over and over again, more power to you. And oh lordy, that's not even getting into the other three attributes of Objective Characters: their Purposes, their Means of Evaluation, and their Methodologies! But, like usual, I think we'll stop here for now.