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Champions of Equestria

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I told you guys, I saw it coming…

safe2281367 edit181500 edited screencap95965 screencap303141 starlight glimmer62877 twilight sparkle373037 alicorn339086 pony1714883 g42138210 my little pony: friendship is magic268517 shadow play1493 debate in the comments293 drama3360 josh haber147 meme97110 op is a duck5003 op is right87 op is trying to start shit3171 op started shit236 starlight drama327 twilight sparkle (alicorn)155589
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Jarkes
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
My Little Pony - 1992 Edition
Wallet After Summer Sale -
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2018) - Celebrated Derpibooru's six year anniversary with friends.
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice
Not a Llama - Happy April Fools Day!
Friendship, Art, and Magic (2017) - Celebrated Derpibooru's five year anniversary with friends.
Thread Starter - Transformers Thread

GOKAAAAI... SILVER!
An image macro that greatly exaggerates Starlight’s actual role in an episode
 
Yep, it’s a ChuymaruZ post all right.
Forest2TS

RD fanboi here
hahahahashahahahahahahashahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha LOL!
cloudkicker108
Birthday Cake - Celebrated MLP's 7th birthday

かたわれ時
@RicardoRenegado  
So, in other words, pretty much anyone who has written for Starlight has made her a toxic character? If that’s so, then I think the perception you have of Starlight is more the result of your own feelings than what the writers have done.
 
Also, are you implying you agree with the top line? Because that isn’t exactly true either.
RicardoRenegado

Status: Ehhhh... Meow?
The only contradiction I have with the image is that Haber is not the only one who has made toxic Starlight chapters, there are also Vogel and the Lewis-Songco girls among whom I remember and they have not been able to make Starlight a real character either, they have only managed to keep Starlight as a toxic character.
Background Pony #B7DB
Yet, Sunset’s amount of fanfiction is multiple times that of Blueblood, and by statistic, so can be said about the amount of fanfiction centered around each character, and the amount that are really good. The fact that a character can inspire and motivate so many to not just write about them, but also put effort into respecting their characterization and build a good story around it, to me at least, it’s a testament of something, and sure, it may reflect on the author to an extent, but I believe it reflects on the character’s writing quality as well.
 
The sheer quantity might be due to her sheer popularity, and the more you get of something, the better the chances of something worthwhile being produced, even if not all the time. This says nothing of her writing, because there are strong, compelling stories of probably every character at this point, regardless of how much established personality they have.
 
The only testament is to how much people like her, as is kind of how fanfiction works. Proof? Sonata Dusk is and has been the most popular of the Dazzlings pretty much since the start, and as we know none of the trio are established to be particularly deep and it seems all anyone ever talks about with Sonata is her cuteness, I’ve got a feeling I know where her popularity comes from. Guess which of the three has the most images on this site, the most people in her fan group over on Fimfic, and is always given the most sympathetic, virtuous depictions in every story, canon completely ignored?
 
Also, blaming Fluttershy for having her friends worry about her is, honestly, quite reaching if you ask me. It’s their decision to care and worry for her, and if they do so, all that does is speak of how meaningful she is to them.
 
Empathy is not a decision. You don’t just pick and choose who you feel sorry for, because emotions act on their own, else a lot of people would live very different lives. One may have reasons backing up their feelings (like you feeling for Sunset, but not Starlight. I mean, you couldn’t just decide that she was suddenly sympathetic if you still sincerely felt otherwise, could you?), but I don’t think it’s possible to just flip compassion on and off like a lightswitch.
 
I probably shouldn’t have just gone with the shortened version for that one, because the point was that it was Fluttershy’s shy, self-doubting behavior that led her friends to worry about her, the way real people do when those with serious confidence issues profess that they want to crawl in a hole and never come out. I think part of it is parental instinct, worrying over someone one cares about because it seems like they can’t just take care of themselves, something that wouldn’t need to be worried about if these ever-present doubts could be conquered already, as Fluttershy has been trying to do for ages.
 
I’ll admit that it’s a very benign example compared to the others (Rainbow nearly blowing up the damn weather factory to spend more time around her tortoise) and Fluttershy may have actually done worse, but the point stands that Starlight is not alone in doing things that hurt others.
 
And speaking of reaching, you’re really gonna blame Sunset on that? I mean, sure, Friendship Games’ conflict could have been solved earlier had she been more tactful, but just as well, so it would if Twilight had refused to unleash the magic, or if the Shadowbolts just weren’t dicks. You’re practically blaming her of “Failing to solve the problem earlier”, which compares none to Starlight’s “Actually causes the problem” or “Makes the situation worse” cases.
 
I didn’t say she alone was to blame, I said she screwed up, made everything worse, and that her actions directly contributed to the conflict. I’d say it’s a reach to absolve her of blame just because others were involved, because you could probably attribute pretty much every problem in the series to more than one specific cause.
 
“Tackling Rainbow and making the sirens stronger with the resulting angry crowd wasn’t her fault, Rainbow was being careless and the sirens were being evil, so Sunset’s innocent!” ?
 
Rainbow was being careless and the sirens were being evil, but that doesn’t change the fact that Sunset screwed up and made the situation worse. I’m not blaming her for failing to solve problems earlier, I’m blaming her for starting them (considering that the sirens were apparently adequately contained before Sunset brought the Element of Magic over, whose fault is it that Equestrian magic is causing problems in this world to begin with?) and making situations worse. In the same vein, it’s not as if everything that’s ever happened with magic can solely be said to be her fault either, because the sirens were still evil, Sci-Twi really should have stopped the first time she noticed she was hurting people, Gloriosa really should have just gotten help with Everfree, etc.
 
First: Again, “Generic” doesn’t mean “Bad”, and there’s really no distinction to make here if all characters are put in the same judgement.
 
You used struggling and getting things done as a reason to like Sunset, but seem to ignore it when Starlight does it. That is why I still don’t buy this reasoning.
 
However, and second: I actually be to differ. I believe in this regard, Starlight occasionally stands out of the generic, and in a bad way. Because let me cite two examples:
– She’s tasked with making a friend to bring for dinner, and she admittedly tries, but after a few failed attempts, rather than endure, she basically goes “Fuck this!” and treats herself to the spa, where lo and behold, she happens to make a friend out of Trixie.
 
She had been trying all day, met with constant failure and frustration, took a break, and either found Trixie by luck or Trixie found her with the intent of screwing with Twilight. Contrivance is certainly nothing new to this series, but I don’t think it’s fair to say she gave up and was rewarded for it so much as the timing working out when she was at her low point.
 
– When Luna and Celestia are arguing, rather than confront them in anything even close to resembling a rational argument, she goes for her crutch again and forcefully uses her magic onto others, forcing their switch in Cutie Marks and powers, which then escalated the situation, only for it to be resolved by itself after getting at its worst.
 
She had been trying to get them to talk for the entire last day or so, freaked out during a tense, possible-second-coming-of-Nightmare-Moon moment, and made a rash decision. But I guess that’s only okay when Sunset does it.
 
You can do the same thing with her, you know. Ahem!
 
“Sunset is the bad kind of generic, she just rushes in without thinking and makes a mess of things because being calm and patient isn’t working out for her, so she basically goes “Fuck this!” and blows her top, and since it all works out for her, she’s basically being rewarded for doing the wrong thing.”
 
For the record, I don’t sincerely see it that way, but I might if I were so heavily biased against her that I’d take any excuse to condemn her actions.
Background Pony #B7DB
Aha, it goofed again! Yes, it seems that posting too long makes it fumble. Try #2!  
@Alexlayer  
See, here’s the thing, when Sunset screws up, I’ve found it both relatable and sympathetic. Take for example her bursting out to Twilight, which was fueled out of the fear and anger she just experienced at almost dying and having just seen Rainbow Dash getting hurt when Twilight drained her magic (that shit definitely looks like it hurts), and not to mention that while the intensity with which she delivered her message was certainly more than needed, Twilight needed to be told to quit it with that device. Another example is when she ended up cutting “Awesome as I wanna be” short due to Rainbow almost revealing their secret (which was ultimately pointless but whatever), messing up the entire set and in any other day, getting them disqualified. It’s still something she did with the right intention in mind, even if short sighted.
Meanwhile, Starlight brainwashes her own friends and both sets on fire and floods the castle, all because she… wanted to cheat on her homework – slash – wanted to take the easy way because she was getting uncomfortable. And while I can relate to feeling discomfort upon stepping out of one’s comfort zone, it’s never something I’d even consider warrant even a fraction of all this. So while Sunset’s screw ups are both relatable and sympathetic, Starlight’s relatability is questionable at best, and sympathy’s downright thrown out the window.
 
I guess that makes some amount of sense, if one automatically leans towards the worst interpretations of Starlight’s actions every single time. I’d say it could be argued that she was as worried about disappointing Twilight (in the exact same way Twilight worried about disappointing Celestia, which led her to do some insane things), but even if we assume she’s just being selfish, again, that’s the more common, more human, more relatable reaction.
 
The question was why Sunset’s screw-ups were relatable and Starlight’s weren’t, and while I think I can agree that Sunset’s are generally more sympathetic (outside EQG1, obviously), I doubt as many people have stories of messing up because they wanted to do the right thing as they do because they were selfish.
 
And in regards of Starlight’s prowess, I’m anything but pleased about it. I always felt like Starlight was rewritten from just an average, if perhaps quirky unicorn back in “The Cutie Map” who then got retconned into the biggest powerhouse in the entire show for the sake of Twilight being unable to just defeat her in “The Cutie Re-Mark”, since having her beat the crap out of her wouldn’t exactly be “friendly” and the only other acceptable route for the narrative to take if Twilight could defeat her would likely be the same that was employed with Tirek. Ever since, they’ve stuck with having Starlight being extremely powerful since it’s apparently one of the few things that makes her distinguishable, but it always felt like just another cheap way of trying to sell her as “Cool”, especially since despite her talent for it, she never actually showed any…
 
Um… Do you remember those episodes? I mean, I haven’t seen them in a couple years myself, so maybe it’s me, but I’m pretty sure she was never ‘average.’
 
Starlight was removing cutie marks and their associated talents from her first appearance. There is no argument to be made that she isn’t and hasn’t always been good with magic on levels even Twilight barely understands (if she doesn’t seem to know how the cutie mark stuff worked, though I haven’t seen the episodes in a while).
 
Even in her first flashback to Sunburst, they were playing with magic, I’m pretty sure it was stated as something they did often, so we have that she’s at least been experimenting since childhood. That combined with a pathological obsession and the extra power she gets from her emotions make it pretty clear to me why she might be able to do what she does, even if she wasn’t feeling so hot against her entire village at once. Or heck, if one believes that all she does is run away when things get difficult, it might be more in-character for her to flee anyway.
 
Regardless, though, even then, I can’t say Starlight’s natural talent is a plus for me because most of the time, it feels like just another privilege for her. Like she’s so good that she doesn’t even have to try.
 
I can see where you’re coming from on this one; it’s part of why I’ve lost all sympathy for the EQG protagonists. It seems like they can just suddenly do anything they put their minds to out of nowhere, which, as the Rainbow Rocks preview shorts seem to suggest the magic just gives them talents (as for music), we now see them expertly fixing up buses in no time at all, and as we know for a fact that the magic just gives them new talents/abilities out of nowhere (Sci-Twi’s magical lockpicking), it seems like the Rainbooms are just automatically good at pretty much everything as long as it’s plot-convenient. That seems like pretty high magic privilege to me, whether the magic works differently or not.
 
Sunset and Blueblood are very different characters, as in, not because of personality, but the extent to which they are each developed, and because of it, so is their fanfiction. Blueblood is little more than an archetype, so there’s a lot more you can project onto him, and thus get a way with plenty of things with how you decide to portray him, whereas Sunset’s got a lot more of characterization that the writers must address in order to make her feel in-character for the readers. You can’t write Sunset the same “easy” way you could write Blueblood.
 
I’ve seen Sunset written in just as varied ways (sometimes a pious little angel, sometimes a hypocritical thug) as Blueblood, but I agree that there are more boundaries for Sunset to properly resemble what we see in canon. The thing is, those boundaries are usually ignored in what I’ve seen, because commenters usually don’t seem to have a problem with pretty much any version of Sunset unless it’s not flattering. There are plenty of renditions that don’t seem far off canon in all but a few aspects, but in my experience, very few care about the deviations as long as their favorite is the successful hero in the end.
 
Over and over, I’ve seen Sunset written as smart, strong, beautiful (probably because it’s fanfiction; every primary character is typically written to be stunning), skilled, an endless barrel of empathy and understanding (granted, I really wish she had turned out like that, or at least a little more inclined to understanding people in similar situations to herself), and pretty much never in the wrong even when she’s attacking people with little or no provocation, very little of which applies to her in reality. Because it’s often not a matter of what happens in canon, it’s fan fiction, based on what the writer likes most, and biases are usually clear as day.
 
My original point with all of this was that it isn’t a matter of Sunset being ‘better written,’ it’s that people liked her more because she was projecting heavy waves of ‘hug me!’ vibes in Rainbow Rocks (and she’s only been getting cuter, at that! I still grin like a dolt remembering her wake up kung-fu motions) and that injection of love and sympathy did the rest, regardless of actual merits and flaws. When I see the behavior of her more vocal fans (which I recognize quite well because I used to be right there with them), I only feel more sure of this.
Alexlayer
Perfect Pony Plot Provider - Uploader of 10+ images with 350 upvotes or more (Questionable/Explicit)
The End wasn't The End - Found a new home after the great exodus of 2012

Eternal Flame
((Yup, it worked. I guess Derpibooru doesn’t like that long a post as picture comments?))
 
@Background Pony #F092
-No, fanon representations do not really credit the original character, and I know this because I’ve seen and written so many interpretations of otherwise 2D Prince Blueblood. Truth be told, every fan-written character is an OC wearing that character’s skin, it’s just a matter of how convincingly the disguise is pulled off. (worryingly often, the answer is ‘not at all!’, but that’s another issue. ^^; ) The reasons for an author to pick any given character says more about what the author wanted for their role in the desired story, I think, than anything about them in canon, if that makes sense.
If handled right, pretty much any character can be strong and likable, no matter their onscreen behavior. Ideally, the fanon version should strongly resemble the source material, but the less we know about them, the more room we have to fill in the blanks ourselves. I’ve seen compelling, interesting renditions of Mr. Common Carnival Faire that couldn’t remotely be attributed to just what we saw in Best Night Ever, so I don’t think it’s fair to credit Sunset for her fans’ loving (and often heavily skewed) depictions.
 
I’m gonna have to disagree with you on this. Not because I believe you’re wrong – in fact, I’d say you’re largely right, if somewhat… narrow minded? What’s even the word for it? Basically, you’re looking at it one way based on a single strand of examples and refusing it to look at another even though that strand of examples can’t possible encompass all that is fanfiction – but my point is, neither of us is wrong here.
 
Sunset and Blueblood are very different characters, as in, not because of personality, but the extent to which they are each developed, and because of it, so is their fanfiction. Blueblood is little more than an archetype, so there’s a lot more you can project onto him, and thus get a way with plenty of things with how you decide to portray him, whereas Sunset’s got a lot more of characterization that the writers must address in order to make her feel in-character for the readers. You can’t write Sunset the same “easy” way you could write Blueblood.
 
Yet, Sunset’s amount of fanfiction is multiple times that of Blueblood, and by statistic, so can be said about the amount of fanfiction centered around each character, and the amount that are really good. The fact that a character can inspire and motivate so many to not just write about them, but also put effort into respecting their characterization and build a good story around it, to me at least, it’s a testament of something, and sure, it may reflect on the author to an extent, but I believe it reflects on the character’s writing quality as well.
 
@Background Pony #F092
-I think I can see what you mean with Fluttershy giving up being more tolerable because she’s so nice. I don’t agree with it and think Starlight is a reasonably good pony herself, but I see where you’re coming from.
 
Okay.
 
…yeah, nothing else to say here.
 
@Background Pony #F092
-Starlight is not the only one who hurts others with her actions, Twilight having been the progenitor of reckless magic on this show and the others all having hurt someone at some point with their usual character flaws. Even Fluttershy makes others worry about her, and if they weren’t hurting for her on some level, they wouldn’t care enough to reach out to her. Sunset has probably done more damage than anyone, usually strengthening the villain with her screw-ups or otherwise making threats even worse. The Friendship Games conflict probably could have been resolved right after the second event if she hadn’t blown her top and driven off the person at the heart of it all.
 
I’m well aware that all protagonists, and even prominent side characters like Discord, have had low points like this, but this just brings me back to what I was pointing out before: Starlight has way too many flaws, and very few virtues to overcompensate with.
 
Also, blaming Fluttershy for having her friends worry about her is, honestly, quite reaching if you ask me. It’s their decision to care and worry for her, and if they do so, all that does is speak of how meaningful she is to them.
 
And speaking of reaching, you’re really gonna blame Sunset on that? I mean, sure, Friendship Games’ conflict could have been solved earlier had she been more tactful, but just as well, so it would if Twilight had refused to unleash the magic, or if the Shadowbolts just weren’t dicks. You’re practically blaming her of “Failing to solve the problem earlier”, which compares none to Starlight’s “Actually causes the problem” or “Makes the situation worse” cases.
 
@Background Pony #F092
-All of the characters struggling and then getting things done when they need to is, as we’ve discussed, the generic Hero response. Starlight included.
 
First: Again, “Generic” doesn’t mean “Bad”, and there’s really no distinction to make here if all characters are put in the same judgement.
 
However, and second: I actually be to differ. I believe in this regard, Starlight occasionally stands out of the generic, and in a bad way. Because let me cite two examples:  
  • She’s tasked with making a friend to bring for dinner, and she admittedly tries, but after a few failed attempts, rather than endure, she basically goes “Fuck this!” and treats herself to the spa, where lo and behold, she happens to make a friend out of Trixie.  
  • When Luna and Celestia are arguing, rather than confront them in anything even close to resembling a rational argument, she goes for her crutch again and forcefully uses her magic onto others, forcing their switch in Cutie Marks and powers, which then escalated the situation, only for it to be resolved by itself after getting at its worst.
     
    The point here is that at least twice, rather than confront her demons, Starlight gave in to them, but then the writing had things go in her favor anyway. She’s being rewarded for doing the wrong thing. Much like she got practically rewarded with a place to live and a position as Twilight’s student after begrudgingly pursuing revenge, with no concern for the pain she might cause.
     
@Background Pony #F092
-It’s been argued elsewhere that the episode wouldn’t really have worked with anyone but Starlight, and as I’d rather not re-hash that here, I’ll say I’m glad you’re not completely unpleasable and leave it at that. :)
 
I’ve heard that argument before, and I strongly disagree with it. As in, “I can deconstruct and reconstruct the episode for you without Starlight in it” levels of disagree with it, so I suggest not bringing up that point anyway.