Trixie & Suicide

– This show would never do that. Even Larson wouldn’t be callous enough to include a broken suicidal husk in a show for 6-year-old children.

– Trixie had decided to perform this trick for her Working Title Tour long before she even met Starlight. After Starlight left, Trixie had no choice but to perform the trick without her help, since a. that was her original intention anyway and b. the audience was already there and expecting the show to start when all the directions got bucked.

– The trick Trixie performs is explicitly stated as belonging to Hoofdini. The real Houdini was well-known not only for his many daring escapes from life-threatening situations, but for his many failures to escape from life-threatening situations. To say that Trixie was suicidal is to say that Hoofdini is suicidal and that is simply dum dum dum. The point is not “Woohoo free from the mortal coil! xD” but taking the escape as a personal challenge of survival. Risk-takers perform these dangerous stunts not for a desire to die but for the thrill of living.

– Trixie’s dramatic nonsense about “If you mess it up I’ll be a goner” et al are completely typical of all sensational stage performers who must constantly maintain the illusion of life endangerment and ultimatum. That is her job; she is an illusionist and certain fibs are necessary to maintain the illusion. Note that Fluttershy acts terrified of the manticore… but Fluttershy of all ponies would know the manticore was completely safe; she’s merely playing along to be a good audience.

So in short, no, Trixie was not suicidal in this episode for several reasons, one of them being that she was never in danger of dying

@Background Pony #F105

HURR DURR I CAN’T REFUTE YOUR POINTS SO I’M JUST GOING TO INSULT YOUR NAME!

@SocDev

Can all of these offending posts be removed, please? It’s quite clear the intent was merely to disrupt the topic and if they remain that will be successful.

Trixie: As great and powerful as I am, there’s one trick I’ve never been able to do – the Moonshot Manticore Mouth Dive! Only one magician has ever pulled it off – my hero, Hoofdini! You are supposed to blast yourself into the open mouth of a hungry manticore! After the manticore chews you up and swallows you, you magically step out of a box on the other side of the stage! Completely unharmed!
Starlight Glimmer: That sounds very…
Trixie: Dangerous?
Starlight Glimmer: I was gonna say cool!
Trixie: I knew I liked you for a reason. I don’t know how he did it! If I tried it, I’d get chewed up and swallowed by that manticore.
Starlight Glimmer: Not if you could use real magic.
Trixie: Obviously. Way to rub it in.
Starlight Glimmer: No, I mean, I could help! You could start the trick, and right before you got chewed up, I could use magic to save you and make you appear in the black box!
Trixie: I guess that would work… But if you made one mistake, I’d be a goner.

And frankly, if she did work out another way to survive the trick, she certainly doesn’t show it during her flight towards the manticore. She actually looks rather frightened, like it might actually be her life on the line.  

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Honesty I think Trixie at that point was more engaging in self destructive behavior than anything. I think she realized, once Starlight had been made wise to Trixie’s desire to beat Twilight using their friendship, how badly she had screwed up with what could potentially be the first pony in ages to consider her a friend. The stress resulting from that sent her in a spiral of self destructive behavior, one aspect of which is demonstrating a lack of competency as a way to remove herself from the situation.

my callous tone was nothing more than a mirror of things you have said here before

Trixie doesn’t state it’s a trick she “couldn’t do”; she says it’s a trick she has never been able to do, i.e. she has tried it multiple times before. Ergo, it’s not a lethal trick when failed, since she’s still here after failing it an unknown number of times (at least twice.)

“I don’t know how he did it! If I tried it, I’d get chewed up and swallowed by that manticore.”

“Only one magician has ever pulled it off – my hero, Hoofdini!”

“Come one, come all. Come and see the Pathetic and Friendless Trixie’s ‘Way-To-Go-Dum-Dum-You-Really-Messed-It-Up-This-Time Repentance Tour’.”

As I’ve already said, Fluttershy acts scared of the manticore, a creature she was not afraid of half a decade ago when a wild one actually attacked her for real. The manticore in this episode not only patiently waits in his precise place on stage rather than rampage through the audience, but takes a bow after the show. Even the little girls the show is aimed towards would know better than to think the manticore was actually dangerous, since a cornerstone of the joke relies on him obviously not being it and all – but most bronies have consistently illustrated that they don’t have the sense and reason of a little girl.

• This isn’t a point. The episode contained what it contained. Insisting that you know better than the creators, AND insisting that your expectations come before what we actually saw is friggin ridiculous. And on top of all that, the idea that “they’d never go there” isn’t even true. Remember when Nickelodeon aired a murder suicide? The idea that a “kids show” can’t cover certain material is both highly regressive to the medium, and blatantly false.
   
• This one is pretty flat out wrong. She never said she was planning to preform the trick. In fact, she was frustrated that she couldn’t. She clearly only decided to do it after Starlight proposed a solution, and I don’t even know how you came to this conclusion.
   
• I really have no idea what point you’re trying to derive from this one. Aside from maybe the idea that thrill seeking isn’t a death wish. Which is true, but irrelevant. There’s a mighty huge difference between a chance of death, and a certainty of death. Beginning an act you don’t at all think you can survive is pretty much the definition of suicide. Even if you want to assume she was playing up the danger for the show, her little monologue before firing herself wasn’t heard by anyone, and there’s no reason to believe it was false. She legitimately though she would die without Starlight’s help.
   
• And finally this last one is all completely baseless. All of it. You’re insisting that she had some previously unexplained way out, or that it was actually safe, without the slightest amount of evidence to support it. You think Fluttershy was “in on it”? We’ve seen her “acting”, and it’s not convincing. And the idea that the manticore was safe, especially by drawing on Fluttershy’s handling of them, is also pretty baseless. Just because a snake charmer knows how to handle a snake doesn’t mean it’s not a dangerous and venomous animal. If anything, Fluttershy’s reaction only confirms the danger.
   
  But more importantly, the whole argument is basically relying on the idea that being a kids show means there’s no danger. You’ve concluded that there must be some unstated or off screen safety feature they just aren’t showing us because your personal expectations of the shows rating forbid actual death. And I can’t even begin to express how backwards and ridiculous that is. You’re basically saying that your expectations of the show actually define it’s content. And I’m sorry but no, they don’t.
   
  If you think they’d never go there, well I’m sorry, but they did.

@Background Pony #00F7

I appreciate someone taking the time to act like an adult and not a small child.

Blah blah I’m superior to veryone blah blah…

BGPs are gonna need to pick a different means of getting under my skin. Fighting me on my own turf by trying to out-condescend me? That’s a fight they’re simply not equipped to win.

Your main point

Trixie doesn’t state it’s a trick she “couldn’t do”; she says it’s a trick she has never been able to do, i.e. she has tried it multiple times before. Ergo, it’s not a lethal trick when failed, since she’s still here after failing it an unknown number of times (at least twice.)

As I’ve already said, Fluttershy acts scared of the manticore, a creature she was not afraid of half a decade ago when a wild one actually attacked her for real.

The manticore in this episode not only patiently waits in his precise place on stage rather than rampage through the audience,

Even the little girls the show is aimed towards would know better than to think the manticore was actually dangerous, since a cornerstone of the joke relies on him obviously not being it and all – but most bronies have consistently illustrated that they don’t have the sense and reason of a little girl.

As for Trixie’s self-destructive behavior, I can’t argue with that – she’s done little more than chew her own foot off for all three of her episodes. I simply don’t consider her to be suicidal so much as table-flipping, a habit I have rather some personal experience with.

By the time the show started, Trixie would have already advertised that she was going to perform the whatever the heck manticore dive. Attempting the trick solo was her only option since canceling would remove any chance of salvaging her career.