Scrounge 
"[@FrustrationInExcelsis":](/1640458#comment_6846564
)
> [bq="FrustrationInExcelsis"]"@Scrounge":](/1640458#comment_6843611
[bq])
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> > Without her blimp and her magic smoke bombs and her giant badger guys, she’s nothing special. So she knows some fancy kicks. Big deal. You could say that about_*Rarity_*.[/bq]
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> I'm not sure how important that is, to be quite honest. A character's competence and threat level depend on more than their physical strength and abilities. Yes, Tempest isn't more, physically, than a competent fighter, but it's her ability to do what she does with her fleet and her army that makes her remarkable. To continue that example, if you were to put Rarity in Tempest's place, in charge of the same armada, storm guards and invasion, she wouldn't have been able to do what Temepst did or do it as efficiently, because Tempest has skills and knowledge and experience Rarity, or the rest of the main cast for that matter, does not. There's being a good mage or warrior, and then there's being a good general, and these are separate things.
[/bq]
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Any time the movie played her up as a threat, it was based on either her physical abilities or her outright cruelty. Her ability to command is not presented as a reason to fear her.
Aside from that, though, fair enough... Except we never see her actually_*strategize_* either. There's no real indication that the assault on Canterlot was planned out beyond scheduling and supplies, and those petrifier smoke bombs made more of a difference than anything else; presumably those can be used by anyone. She fails to provide her commander with sufficient information on the plans in motion, to the point where he doesn't seem to understand things that were _*ostensibly his idea_*, though this may admittedly have more to do with the Storm King's shortcomings than with hers. And her capture of Twilight seems to involve just suddenly _*being_* there, with nopony seeing the blimp and neither Twilight nor Spike saw its shadow as it took position above them, having one of her brutes on the ground already to grab Spike, at which point she drops a cage on Twilight (which requires it have no bottom) and pulls her up to the blimp in it (which requires it to have a bottom); I'm not going to assign any meaning to this sequence of events until I can get it to make sense to me.
" So you'll forgive me for not having thought of her in terms of leadership without your prompting.
[@FrustrationInExcelsis":](/1640458#comment_6846564
[bq="FrustrationInExcelsis"])
> Huh. Magic-suppressing horn caps are canon now, I guess.[/bq]
And yet artists and fanfic writers are gonna just keep on using rings for that purpose.
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[@FrustrationInExcelsis":](/1640458#comment_6846564
[bq="FrustrationInExcelsis"])
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> [@Scrounge":](/1640458#comment_6842191
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> True, but the last guy who did that was also a villain with deliberately limited character whom no-one in the audience had any particular reason to care about beyond a point, whereas Tempest was deliberately intended to be someone the audience would, by the end, like and sympathize with.[/bq]
So's Starlight, and yet there's a decently-populated@"`[Starlight gets what's coming to her":](/tags/starlight+gets+what%27s+coming+to+her@)` tag as testament to how mixed the reception was for that one. (Only Principal Cinch, who was intended to be hated, has "[a similar tag":](/tags/principal+cinch+gets+whats+coming+to+her), and hers is much smaller.) So that can't be enough on its own to absolve Tempest of her guilt, can it?
nobody's favorite
> [
[bq]
>
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> > Without her blimp and her magic smoke bombs and her giant badger guys, she’s nothing special. So she knows some fancy kicks. Big deal. You could say that about
>
>
> I'm not sure how important that is, to be quite honest. A character's competence and threat level depend on more than their physical strength and abilities. Yes, Tempest isn't more, physically, than a competent fighter, but it's her ability to do what she does with her fleet and her army that makes her remarkable. To continue that example, if you were to put Rarity in Tempest's place, in charge of the same armada, storm guards and invasion, she wouldn't have been able to do what Temepst did or do it as efficiently, because Tempest has skills and knowledge and experience Rarity, or the rest of the main cast for that matter, does not. There's being a good mage or warrior, and then there's being a good general, and these are separate things.
[/bq]
>
Any time the movie played her up as a threat, it was based on either her physical abilities or her outright cruelty. Her ability to command is not presented as a reason to fear her.
Aside from that, though, fair enough... Except we never see her actually
"
[@FrustrationInExcelsis
[bq="FrustrationInExcelsis"]
> Huh. Magic-suppressing horn caps are canon now, I guess.
And yet artists and fanfic writers are gonna just keep on using rings for that purpose.
"
[@FrustrationInExcelsis
[bq="FrustrationInExcelsis"]
"
>
> [@Scrounge
>
> True, but the last guy who did that was also a villain with deliberately limited character whom no-one in the audience had any particular reason to care about beyond a point, whereas Tempest was deliberately intended to be someone the audience would, by the end, like and sympathize with.
So's Starlight, and yet there's a decently-populated