Sundown Companion: Chapter 2 · 4:31pm Aug 18th, 2014
Hello all! Welcome to the second of these blogs about Sundown and the logic I am using for it. I am so pleased that so many people have read Sundown. I am a bit overwhelmed at how many people are giving it attention. I almost shied away and hid! Thank you so much!
I am trying not to spoil anything that will happen and any foreshadowing I may or may not have done won't be discussed. This is just about the depression and issues I am addressing and my thoughts on them. This chapter has less advice I can give because there isn't as much recovery in the chapter.
First I need to get it off my chest. Yes, this chapter was based off a very personal experience of mine as is a lot of this story as well. Sunset Shimmer and I have made similar mistakes when its come to interactions with peers. I won't be going into any further detail than that I am afraid.
This chapter is longer but has less about depression and more about some of the other aspects of what Sunset is going to have to deal with. She gets back to her snarky self shortly but its short lived as she quickly runs into Gilda. She maintains the act throughout their interaction, but it crumbles away as she lays alone on the roof. When Celestia finds her she is about to do the most selfish act. Suicide in any form is not the answer. It is a way of running away from your problems. As a plot device it is hard to do sympathetically. A lot of people just don't understand correctly what it means to actually think of doing it.
Thoughts of suicide don't just magically appear cause you are having a bad day. For me, and for by extension Sunset, they only cropped up when I was left alone in a situation where I felt abandoned. I mention it explicitly this chapter, but Sunset was up there for around 4 hours. She was feeling that since Celestia hadn't come to find her, that she didn't want her.
Feeling unloved is why Celestia's words hurt Sunset more than being left on the roof. She explained why she was up there for the report and she managed to tell Celestia how she convince herself to jump off the ledge without breaking down. It was only Celestia's words that hurt her deeply. She had just been feeling unloved and then Celestia reminded her that she isn't who she needs her to be.
Sunset does realize that Celestia did not mean to hurt her, but that hurt is still there and even if the reason is something that shouldn't get to her. That is why she just walks away. She wants some time alone to assess her feelings and calm down.
I also wanted to talk about Gilda's part in all this. Bullying Sunset was... not originally in the plan for this chapter. I was stuck though and that was when I remembered an event in my life and I used that as a base of how this chapter progressed.
Bullying is going to have a role in this story. Sunset's actions won't go unpunished in the minds of her peers and now she has no hold over the students of the school, they aren't afraid of what she will do to them anymore. This is only the first of a few planned run ins with Sunset's peers that go very badly.
This is really informative!