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I told you guys, I saw it coming…
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+-SH safe2281367 +-SH edit181500 +-SH edited screencap95965 +-SH screencap303141 +-SH starlight glimmer62877 +-SH twilight sparkle373037 +-SH alicorn339086 +-SH pony1714883 +-SH g42138210 +-SH my little pony: friendship is magic268517 +-SH shadow play1493 +-SH debate in the comments293 +-SH drama3360 +-SH josh haber147 +-SH meme97110 +-SH op is a duck5003 +-SH op is right87 +-SH op is trying to start shit3171 +-SH op started shit236 +-SH starlight drama327 +-SH twilight sparkle (alicorn)155589
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Edited
I found it funny at the time that Slowbro was considered better than Slowking.
No, I saw this before (I even commented on it), it’s just that somehow I didn’t come up with that until just now. No idea why.
Yep, it’s a ChuymaruZ post all right.
she help Twilight saved stygian
Edited
Why of course I knew that was sarcasm, no need to point that out silly filly!
K…
>Starlight in your profile pic
Why am I not surprised?
SarcasmSo much syay.
@Pagan
No kidding. In more than one sense of the word.
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.
Edited
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@Alexlayer
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Okay.
…yeah, nothing else to say here.
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.
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:
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.
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.