#but if he's ever shown being proficient at an instrument out of nowhere I'm going to FUCKING RIOT

[piracytheorist]

The fact that of all instruments, Loid chose to see Anya's potential in music through a violin drives me insane. The violin is one of the hardest instruments to learn, and even harder to master a good sound for beginners. Among my co-students we had a joke that went something like "When a child is on their first year on the violin, their entire family suffers" because most first-year violin students (unless they're like, prodigies or something) need about a year to achieve a sound that sounds like music and not like nails on a chalkboard. Even people who eventually become professional violinists are pretty terrible on their first year.

And aside from the difficulty of producing a good sound, there's the thing about the violin (along with the other string instruments of that section, viola, cello and double bass) being a fretless instrument. There are no frets separating the neck in "notes". That means that you only learn where each note is by practice and muscle memory.

In comparison, guitars - also string instruments, but of a different classification since they don't use bows - have frets.

(that doesn't mean that the guitar is a much easier instrument to learn or play. But you can clearly tell where each note is - though you still have to practice a lot before you can confidently play without counting the frets each time)

WHAT I'M SAYING IS, when introducing children of that age into playing music you usually start with percussion instruments to give them the hands-on experience of "I hit this and it makes a sound. I hit it differently and it makes a different sound". If the child wants to pick up a more demanding instrument... at least you need some patience as a caretaker and an instructor. My boi Loid gave up after a few minutes of Anya simply exploring the instrument.

Now, I understand this was done for humorous purposes, Anya did overdramatically break the strings after all, and to show that Twilight was so stressed for time that he forgot that kids need time to learn and develop a skill. He has the same reaction with Anya being normal for her age at drawing and gymnastics, too. Especially with the gymnastics thing - just like he gave her a violin and expected her to play fucking Paganini or whatever, he had her try jumping on a vault, then Yor came and suggested something more appropriate and achievable for a beginner her age, jumping rope.

Still, I'm going to raise my snooty nose and take this as a headcanon that, finally, we were shown something Twilight genuinely doesn't know shit about. He knows to take the family to the opera to make them appear upper-class, but he doesn't know how one learns music. I mean, that's okay. He's perfect in pretty much all other specialties, he can afford being shitty at one.