Sunset Shimmer: Mistaken Identity? · 12:53am Oct 12th, 2016
I'll start with this: I do not hate Sunset Shimmer, and if anything, it would be better for my own stories if what I was about to share were completely untrue. However, while it's still possible that I've overlooked something, I think the evidence speaks for itself. I'll ask you to please actually read this entire blog post before you scroll down to leave a comment, and to approach the subject with an open mind. Thank you.
In the three or so years since her debut, Sunset Shimmer has become overwhelmingly popular, namely following Rainbow Rocks. I have theories on why this is, and none of it has to do with her actually being half as amazing as some of her fans seem to think.
Since EQG1 (though it didn't really kick in until after EQG2), it's generally been thought that she was an awesome genius, because she used to be Celestia's star student and therefore couldn't have been a moron, and post-EQG-1, she always wins her conflicts. At face value, she's pretty outstanding, right?
Well, no. For those paying attention, the facts tell a very different story, and not only does she fail to actually show us this supposed brilliance (that she alone is the only one in all four movies to tell the audience she has, and only during her ridiculous vanity phase), but her actual accomplishments are very few when not directing the kind of magic that instantly fixes everything with little more than a click of her heels. I've gone through all four movies, and her origin comic, and found nothing I can solidly point to if I wanted to show someone else to say "No, really, she's super smart and totally amazing!"
What I found instead suggests that at best, she's a fairly average person with unbelievable, reality-warping levels of luck, which sometimes has no other purpose than to make her look cool. This is NOT to say that she's completely incompetent and never does anything right, no such thing is true, but she's not particularly smart and it seems that the universe itself just bends to her favor. My reasons for thinking this are as follows.
Spoilers for all four EQG movies, just in case it wasn't kind of implied by now. Also for the season 6 finale, towards the end.
-----Here are my reasons for thinking the world works for her convenience:
-Just in EQG1, everything working out easily (CHS apparently being full of MASSIVE idiots and terrible friends if Sunset's methods went off without a hitch up until then) for her until Twilight showed up, at which point the best thing for her was to lose.
-Nobody ever stands up to her. Ever. Good thing, or she might have been challenged and lost.
-When the subjects of why they don't trust each other finally comes up, the human 5's confusion makes it clear that all the arguments and broken friendships Sunset caused went unchallenged because until Twilight showed up, nobody had bothered talking to each other to see if anything Sunset set up was actually true. For years. Twilight even points this out.
Never once did they call one another to ask questions, never once did they make a passing comment that didn't add up like they do a little after Twilight arrives, never once did anyone do anything but take everything Sunset arranged at face value. Lucky for her they're all so easily manipulated.
-Vice Principal Luna, when told by a weepy-eyed Sunset that Twilight was responsible for destroying the dance, shows no sign of awareness of Sunset's reputation through the entire rest of the school, and doesn't question for a second how Sunset got her 'proof' or why she didn't think to do anything but take pictures, then report it to Luna well after the fact. The question of whether or not Twilight even has an alibi, even when constantly surrounded by her new friends, doesn't come up before Flash shows us that she could have at least tried to hide the byproducts of her photoshop session. I don't recall anyone making the slightest move to investigate who did mess up the dance after Twilight was in the clear, either, but I guess the chance of someone having seen Snips and Snails leaving the area with Sunset, smiling like the cat who ate the canary, would have doomed her just a little too soon.
On that note, I'm counting the fact that Flash just so happened to find those pictures in the library, because it neatly paved the way for Sunset's defeat, which opened the door to reforming her and everything that's gone her way since. Even if CHS happens to not have any security cameras, any of Twilight's friends could have vouched for her, but no, lucky Flash out of nowhere.
Note: When I say this stuff is lucky for her, I really do mean that, because what would it have been like if she'd failed? If people talked to each other, her shoddy plans fell apart, and she lost all hope of her triumphant revenge? I figure it'd be a pretty pitiful picture, and even if she got her drive for evil kicked out of her in the process, I don't think things would have worked out nearly as well for her as they did in canon.
EQG2:
-Applejack comments that the whole Fall Formal incident brought everyone closer together than ever. Funny how these magical calamities always leave everyone much better off than they were. The song they sing after is even called "Better Than Ever"
-AJ is also the one to point out that the Rainbooms somehow weren't effected by the sirens' music. Not for a fraction of a second does anyone question why, and it's accepted from then on that it just works this way; the way that best serves Sunset Shimmer. We can make all the guesses and assumptions in the world, but at the end of the day, it's just another thing that's super convenient for Sunset, prior rules be damned.
-The counterpart to Sunset's journal (not a book with which you would stock a library) is getting delivered to Twilight just as Sunset uses it for the first time in years. Contrivance and Handwave should be Elements of Harmony.
-the Sirens waited at least a few months (around five, I could swear I remember hearing somewhere) before moving in. Why? They'd doubtlessly been wanting a thing like this since they arrived, Adagio developed and enacted most of her plan on the fly and thus couldn't have needed that much time to scheme, so you'd think they'd just roll right up that same night. Maybe they took that time to gather up as much energy as possible (hoping that the equestrian magic was still around when they got there) or were waiting for the musical showcase, of which they may have been feigning surprise when Sunset brought it up.
Whatever held them up, it clearly allowed Sunset enough time to make solid enough friendships that she was able to snap the others out of their quarrels and rally them against the sirens, or she'd have lost. If the sirens had shown up even within the first week, there'd have been nothing that could stop them.
-And, if we're going with the assumption that the sirens were in the human world for a thousand years or so (which I generally don't, because to me it sounds kind of batty), then their very presence in Canterlot on that particular night (which leads to Sunset being forgiven by the student body) is pretty convenient too.
-When Trixie pulls the lever, Spike just so happens to be out of sight and nowhere near the rest, as opposed to sticking as close as possible to Twilight like he does pretty much all the rest of the time.
-Vinyl showing up at just the right time with just what they needed. Seriously, I timed it, and when the Rainbooms are all friends again, Twilight says "C'mon, we need to get out of here!", and SIX FUCKING SECONDS LATER, Spike opens the door for them. Imagine if he'd come five minutes earlier or five minutes later. But no, he gets there juuust as he's needed with Deus Ex Vinyl Scratch in tow.
-I don't even know where to begin with Vinyl herself, her selectively-deafening headphones, her car, how she seems aware of what people are saying, reacts in timing as though nothing is impairing her hearing, etc. Nobody was even using sign-language, whether you could argue that a dog could do it without thumbs or not.
-The Rainbooms struggling to stop the sirens until she joined, and then being so ridiculously overpowered as to instantly win.
EQG3:
-Staying in the Games even after losing the ELIMINATION equation. Cadence says that the participants with the most points go to the next round, so maybe Sunset racked up a good score (because, luckily for her, the rest of her non-Rainboom team sucked hard enough to not take any from her), and the event is just misnamed.
The kicker is that there's no reason Sunset had to participate in the second event, story-wise, she could have stood on the sidelines for those scenes while Rainbow saved someone else from the plant, then rushed over to try to help Sci-Twi close the spectrometer. Of course, then she might not have gotten to ride a motorcycle and wouldn't look as cool (ignoring the fact that Rainbow, Indigo, and Sugarcoat did the exact same thing).
-Throwing the spectrometer at her feet somehow doing for her what it did for Twilight, only without the insanity. As opposed to just breaking and sending that magic everywhere, or exploding and tearing her to shreds.
Maybe it was just a matter of Twilight's state of mind when she activated it (I outlined some speculations myself in Sirens of CHS), but it makes one wonder if Twilight was acting entirely of her own free will and that this 'Midnight' persona is just something she invented after the fact to live with herself.
-When Sunset is visibly losing to Twilight in their beam-o-war thing, Spike calls out to get Twilight's attention right then, rather than at any other point after her change. This happens to be just what Sunset needed to overpower her in brightest, most spectacular fashion possible.
-I'd seen two instances of someone doubting magic in these movies before Cinch is told that no one would believe her. One is Twilight's friends being doubtful about her backstory (possibly because Pinkie is the one who delivered it) before Spike confirmed in EQG1, and the other is from a thoroughly brainwashed Luna and Celestia when doubting the Rainbooms' story about the sirens in EQG2. Other than that, people just believe it and have no problems, no questions, no nothing the first time they see magic themselves, bar Sci-Twi. That in mind, what sense does it make that everyone takes Celestia's side when she tells Cinch that no one could possibly believe magic happened even when her own argument ("I think saving the world benefits us all") for declaring a tie hinges on it?
When seeing this unfold, Sunset's arrogant smirk tells me she favors this outcome, which is probably why it happens. It barely makes any sense, but it's convenient for Sunset if CHS is suddenly over wanting to beat CP and content with "we're all winners!" and no one else decides to investigate CHS, ever, so it just happens.
EQG4:
-Everyone is having trouble with magic, worried and uncertain of how to control it. Sunset starts singing to tell them to just get used to it, and they do, all worries and lack of practice erased "in just five seconds flat." Damned if that doesn't say it all, but there's yet more.
This next point is a bit of a clusterf
ck, because it's kind of two or three points all melted together.
-The gems in the cave that just so happen to be 'destined' for them, just so happen to be at the camp they go to, and aren't disturbed until Sunset and the rest show up. Even if they only popped up recently, the timing is, again, far too convenient. The powers Sunset gets just so happen to show her what she needs to see (as opposed to a moment when the people she touches were on the toilet or something) when she touches people, revealing Gloriosa's recent history with the geodes and how she just so happened to be at the same pond at which Twilight was crying (I dub it Teardrop Pond!) to see magic (presumably from the damaged portal) go to the cave.
What if Gloriosa hadn't been in that spot at that time? Would Sunset ever have come across the cave and the magic she and her friends were 'always meant to have'? Maybe so, but I'm sure it would have been just as contrived a means to get her the magic as what we saw here.
-Tiny detail, but when they're getting started with the dress rehearsal on the dock, Rarity calls out to Vinyl Scratch, who hears her just fine despite her headphones being on. If the world weren't catered to Sunset Shimmer's ultimate convenience, I'd say this made no sense whatsoever. Even if Vinyl just so happened to not be listening to anything at the time, it again demands ridiculous coincidence that she always did whenever the sirens sang. You'd think that, music lover that she is, she'd at least give this new tune her ear for a few seconds, but no, total soundproofing for just that day and never again.
-I was right about the missing scene being Sunset and Twilight's escape in that LoE blogpost, for which we again get Spike to the rescue. As he was shown to be able to sniff things out just earlier this same movie, I'll assume he followed his nose to find the two of them, but did you know a puppy's teeth can chew clean through tree roots that two teenage girls aren't strong enough to break? They can now.
In all of this, Sunset's only triumphs, the only successes she can claim? Sappy speeches that any one of her friends could have delivered and clap-your-hands-if-you-believe spells that fix everything instantly. She is not immune to inconvenience and/or misfortune, but that when she needs something to happen, it just happens for her, often independent of her own actions.
---And here's why I think she's not actually all that bright. We see her constantly bumbling and failing, doing stupid things and not demonstrating her supposed smarts at all. You could argue that Twilight does a lot of stupid things too, but that doesn't make Sunset any smarter.
Just in EQG1 (at least the worst of it is when she's the doomed-to-failure villain):
-Threatens Twilight with everyone knowing she doesn't belong there, suggests that they keep a lid on it, and rather than finding a way to exploit that information THAT SHE WARNED THEM ABOUT HERSELF, she immediately drafts Snips and Snails to find something she can use against Twilight. Unless she was just precognitive and knew nobody would actually mind the talking dog (and they'd don't), or talking complete bullshit in the hopes of psyching Twilight out. In the context of the questionably-magic-free human world, I kind of got the vibe that her threat was meant to be taken seriously, but if not, feel free to ignore this point.
-Very nearly screwed herself over entirely by having Snips and Snails trash the gym, which she thought she needed to get the crown, rather than having them destroy ANYTHING ELSE (that front lobby full of glass and trophies, maybe?) and blame Twilight for that instead.
-During the scramble to get the crown (borne of her throwing a tantrum and rushing for it after all of her plans have failed), she yells at Snips and Snails to grab it, then as they're chasing spike, she is the one that pushes them aside to get to it herself, thus hindering her own chances. It's worth noting that she only gets the damn thing because Twilight has a stupid moment herself and tosses it over her head when it finally gets back to her. I'm kind of wondering if Twilight just meant to play keep-away for the next hour until the portal closed.
-Her plan was to storm Equestria with a few dozen teenagers. Even if she somehow didn't get curbstomped by the three alicorn princesses, how was she going to keep this army going? Even if she bewitched everyone she saw (if we assume she just has infinite power with which to do that), I don't think her zombies or even a bunch of demon lieutenants would get far against a thinking population already used to fighting with magic.
Not that any of that matters anyway, because for all her talk of Twilight not knowing what happens when you bring an Element into another world, she didn't seem to know just how easily it could be slapped out of her hands. She stood no chance of stopping Twilight from taking it back, because she 'didn't know the first thing' about the power she was trying to use, which seems like an especially glaring error for a magical prodigy.
EQG2:
-After her first encounter with the sirens, in which Sonata says out loud and in no uncertain terms that singing is how they get people to do what they want, her reaction? "There's something off about those girls." "I can't put my finger on it, they just acted sort of... strange around me."
-Challenging the sirens by herself. I don't know if she was just hoping to intimidate them into dropping their plans with brute force, but it takes all of one sentence for them to put her on the defensive and turn what she's doing back on her. Didn't even need a transforming car or 800 gigajoules of magic out of nowhere to do it.
-When worried the sirens would see Rainbow's magic on stage, her quick wit and affinity for thinking under pressure have her tackle Rainbow in plain view of everyone (winning the Rainbooms a bit more scorn and furthering the sirens' plans, feeding them a bit more negative energy to boot), rather than unplugging her instrument, the mic, shouting at her to stop, causing a distraction, anything. Rarity even suggests closing the curtains, unplugging, or just giving the other Rainbooms a chance to deal with it. That last one didn't look like it was going anywhere, but Baconhead Wondertwin Transformation: Quarterback really wasn't much better.
She makes one comment that amounts to "fight fire with fire" when they're thinking about how to stop the sirens and Twilight figures from there that if the sirens are using music and the Rainbooms have been getting their own magic when singing, that they just need a song for a counterspell. That this is overturned later ("I don't think it matters what we do, just as long as we do it as friends!") says she may not have even had that much right.
EQG3:
-She learned a flat nothing from her experiments on the others in the shorts leading up to the movie. Anyone can wear a labcoat and fiddle with equipment, that does not demonstrate actual intelligence of any sort. As said above, Twilight failing repeatedly with the Pinkie sense doesn't mean Sunset is smart for doing the same thing, it just means Twilight failed too. Honestly, I'm not 100% sure about Twilight's brilliance either if Starlight Glimmer, who couldn't have had the same schooling, can match her so easily, but damned if I'm going through all six seasons to do for Twilight what I've done for Sunset here.
At least, not any time soon...
-Getting the Elimination Equation wrong. That alone doesn't make her stupid, but if I'd been told that she just didn't do it as fast as Twilight, it wouldn't have even occurred to me that she wouldn't get it too, given another minute or so. As it stands, she just fails to show us she's any smarter than anyone else again.
It's possible that she gained points somewhere, but if we just have to assume it, it's a handwave at best. The song montage could have shown her doing something with chemistry or looking content and confident like it did with Twilight in the spelling bee, but do you know who gets those parts instead? Fluttershy. Maybe EQG1-Sunset picked on her for more than being an easy target, huh?
-She doesn't figure out that Twilight is responsible for the magic disappearing until Fluttershy (Butterfly Butt: 3, Baconhead: 0, for those keeping track) flatly tells her that Twilight's pendant drained her, and only then does she connect that Twilight might have been the one to drain the portal. I'm not saying she needs to be Sherlock Holmes with these things, but as it stands, it's another missed opportunity to show us she's above average.
"You're supposed to be so smart!"
I think it says something that even on my first viewing, I thought "Ironic coming from you, Sunset." when I heard that line (in the context of all the stupid things she'd done before), even if the full weight of it didn't hit me at the time. It was while reviewing scenes to write Sirens of CHS that I really started thinking about it, leading to this blog post.
-She guesses that the magic is based on being true to themselves. Meaning what, that they should be ponying up every time they're not acting like someone else? We witnessed them changing every time they live up to the spirit of the Elements they're just kind of accepted as embodying because their pony counterparts do, so it's easy for us to say that that's the trigger, but it's not like Sunset has any reason to know about the specific Elements of Harmon- oh, wait, she lists them by name in her speech to Twilight, doesn't she?
Well, so much for that. We never get to see if she's right, anyway, because Legend of Everfree doesn't have them pony up a single time before the cave's magic renders Sunset's theories moot.
EQG4:
-Bumping into Gloriosa, hearing her mad-harpy voice in her head, and Gloriosa's general siren-level off-ness, what is Sunset's take on the situation? "People that chipper make me nervous." She may have actually gotten less observant since EQG2.
-When magic is going haywire again and everyone is getting powers out of nowhere, she only briefly thinks aloud that they should maybe investigate this, "but if letting it go for now is what the rest of you want..."
Most of their powers were clearly shown to be dangerous, but sure, summer camp funtimes should be the top priority. Not like Sunset has ever been careful with magic before, I guess. Luckily, she snaps out of this when Pinkie nearly kills everyone.
-For this next one, I'm just going to copy-paste what I said in my spoiler-tastic LoE blog post:
Timber is seen trailing sparkly dust like what he told the campers Gaia Everfree left behind, and despite the magic going nuts all around them and Gloriosa screaming "I AM HIDING SOMETHING AND MOST LIKELY EVIL" with her every appearance, do you know what Sunset's first thought is?
That Timber must have made the Gaia Everfree thing up (completely independent of the all the magic going around) and is working a Scooby Doo plot to get the camp closed down so they can move to the city, on which she bases having heard him say he wanted to move to the city when he was younger.
Three magical incidents, zero awareness. For pity's sake, Sunset, I thought you learned your lesson from that tour with the sirens.
-Her usual ineptitude at quick thinking is shown when, after standing on the right side of a door to get it slammed in her face, she stumbles away, bumps into Flash (who saw her there), and to cover up, tells him she lost an earring (which she's never worn), then picks up a pebble. Lucky for her, Flash either didn't catch it, or had something more important on his mind.
-When her powers show her exactly what she needs to know, she makes no deductions of her own, just sees it in the heads of those she touches (by the way; ethical issues of that kind of breach of privacy and the potential for the kind of mind-rape activity of which Equestria shows no qualms? Not even touched on.) and states it to the audience. At least when Sonata was dim for the sake of exposition, she was generally fun to watch.
Note: Her sappy speeches and ability to keep it together in standard Main Character fashion is her doing something right, but it doesn't show the intelligence we're told she has, and it's not something none of the others could have done. She is not stupid, just not as smart as we were told she was (and again, that was only by Pride Personified Sunset herself).
Serving under Celestia, one imagines, means she must be gifted, and we see her making a big fireball in her origin comic, but look at Starlight Glimmer. Trixie (according to what I heard one of the creators of the show said once) was in Celestia's school, and seems to be a weakling, and she's definitely a fraud when we first meet her anyway, so I don't think Celestia's tutelage actually means very much.
It was a lie. It was a lie the entire time.
In canon, Sunset Shimmer is neither skilled nor brilliant, owing all of her victories not to her own abilities, but to magic that makes everything better in a snap or insanely contrived coincidences. She is not the amazing superbeing I've seen some fans treat her as, at least not to anyone paying close attention. In reality, she's just Villian-to-Protagonist Character.
Now then, I have a theory about why the world would just happen to work in Sunset's favor like it does.
As we've seen above, Sunset Shimmer has been so lucky, so fortunate, so incredibly favored by 'destiny' that it doesn't feel like a stretch to say the universe itself bends over backwards to ensure she gets what she wants or what's ultimately best for her. What if it really does? Why would it do that?
Well, what if, in the act of stepping through that portal (that initially depicted her as an alicorn, the highest station in Ponydom often likened to a goddess), she didn't travel to another dimension, but brought one into existence? If there was no human world before, or at least not that one, then she might have forced one into being by tripping something in the mirror/portal/thing, time and space twisting into knots and sorting themselves out in the blink of an eye to create the world, its history, its past, present, and future, all catered to do what's best for the girl that brought it into being.
I'm not saying the portal itself had that kind of power, nor Starswirl when he made it, but if we're talking about the boundless cosmos between planes of existance that a portal may cross, who's to say it didn't tap into something obscenely powerful? This is the show that depicts Harmony as omnipotent as long as people who like each other are wearing the right jewelry, and as Starswirl's thing was apparently time magic, the millennia it might have taken to draw and dish out that kind of power could have folded up and been felt like seconds as Sunset's new world took form, with the sirens, though chronologically dumped off there before Sunset's first step from where/when Equestria remembers the order of those events, possibly being dropped anywhere from second after Sunset touched down to a thousand years beforehand (though I lean toward the former) while time and space were still cooling off.
Does that make sense? It does to me, but I've seen more than once that that's not always enough.
Anywho, if all of that is the case, if Sunset is, in essence, the one that created this world (or was witnessed stepping through the rift by some nigh-unfathomable cosmic being that saw her flying through the gaps between existence, took pity, and spent however long was necessary to make a nice place for her to land, be it out of a growing sense of love or that just being its job), then it doesn't seem infeasible that her world does what's best for her, like it does in the movies. Even the Anon-A-Miss thing seemed to have brought her a little closer to her friends, leaving her better off than before, like all of her conflicts do.
I think it is, for all intents and purposes, HER world, everyone else just lives in it. That in mind, when I see fanfics in which everything goes Sunset's way by the end, at least I don't have to think of it as blatant favoritism that borders on (borders on... usually) Mary-Sue levels so much as sticking to the theme of the source material.)
All that out of the way, I don't think it's wrong to make Sunset as smart as we first assumed she was, because if you couldn't add any personality to pre-existing characters whatsoever, you'd have very, very bland fanfics. Sure, the main cast might have colorful personalities, but all those background ponies, one-shot appearances, most antagonists, etc. wouldn't be allowed to show any depth that wasn't clearly there in canon, which I don't think any of us want.
"Why, then," you may ask, "did you bother with all of this?"
Because I noticed it, and figured it I was going to put in the time to seriously investigate this (which I did), I might as well share my thoughts.
Sunset Shimmer has her merits, but her lack of intelligence and the way things just conveniently fall into her lap do not make her 'brilliant' or 'awesome.' She's generic. Standard. The reformed villain thing isn't exactly new, and in my honest opinion, Starlight Glimmer and Discord are much more interesting with it (Luna's pretty much evaporated after one episode), if only because they have a chance to adjust to their new lives onscreen as opposed to getting sucked into hollow, magical showdowns that hog all the running time over and over again.
To write Sunset as being a 'badass genius' is to veer off canon, but as said above, why not? I don't intend to stop writing the sirens with redeeming characteristics in my work, which they definitely don't have in Rainbow Rocks, and I'd be too sad to write Sunset any differently (smart, I mean, not big on the 'action hero' bit) in my work, even if she's not great with putting a plan together.
However, in doing so, I know that the Sunset I portray, the one that's anything more than a fairly average girl of above-average luck, is pure fanon, not rightly faithful to what we actually saw. And now, so do you. 
...Or do we?
I've looked through all the material I could (The IDW Winter Special doesn't show Sunset doing anything particularly smart or stupid, and while things end happily, I wouldn't say reality bent to suit her needs that time, so there was nothing I felt worth mentioning. Plus, y'know, that whole questionably-canon thing) and these are my conclusions, but I'd like to test the theory with other minds, if possible. Do you think I've missed something? Some sign that she does have the booksmarts we've just kind of assumed she had? A moment in which she succeeds without omnipotent magic and coincidence?
If you think she really has earned her fanon reputation, please clearly and thoroughly explain why in the comments below, and thank you for reading the whole thing like a patient, level-headed person!
...And, for those that may be wondering on account of my last blogpost, I don't have a lot (even a few paragraphs is pretty light for me, it seems 
) to say on why I've grown to think Starlight Glimmer is better than Sunset, just that she's clearly every bit as powerful, if not greater in terms of magic, makes her mistakes because she earnestly doesn't understand when/how what she's doing is wrong as opposed to being so blinded with anger or misplaced pride that she does something stupid again, or just doing something stupid in general.
That, and in the season 6 finale, she does the exact opposite of Sunset to win her conflict: Uses her head, shows us that she's pretty sharp and a competent leader by making the most of the skills of those with her, and extends an offer of friendship to her fallen enemy right away (which redeems pretty much an entire evil species that had nearly taken the nation overnight), as opposed to needing them to look like someone she already knows and likes and leaving all others to their own devices.
Sunset made an offer of friendship to Sci-Twi, but not a word to Principal Cinch just minutes later, just more arrogant "Hah, we win!" smirks. Even if Cinch ended up responding like Chrysalis, at least we could say she made the attempt. And, y'know, sirens are probably still out there somewhere. No one said anything to Gloriosa Daisy, either, but I think it sort of went without saying that she wasn't evil-evil, just misguided and desperate.
Come to think of it, Starlight directed a group of people that (apart from Trixie) didn't even know each other, or her, and succeeded while cut off from her greatest weapon, whereas Sunset relies exclusively on friendship-based magic while surrounded by her friends.
Maybe I could go on if I reviewed Starlight's scenes since her debut, but this is venturing into 'a lot' territory.
EDIT: Because I didn't state it clearly here; all the painting, motorbiking, bus-refurbishing, etc. talents Sunset and the rest of her group pull out of nowhere time and again? I think of that as the same magic that gave Rainbow and the rest their skill with instruments in the shorts leading up to Rainbow Rocks, at least the ones that didn't really have/practice any kind of instrument beforehand. With all the nonsense and handwaving about the magic in that world, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they just got random abilities, especially for we-make-this-thing-to-sell-dolls plot reasons. Wouldn't be any stranger than getting super powers from glowing rocks.
The alternative being that they all somehow found the time to practice all of these things and become unrealistically good at everything they try (unless the plot demands they not be for a while), I don't treat those 'talents' as anything Sunset herself can or should take credit for, and don't see them as victories she can claim without magic or luck.
5/29/2017 EDIT: Having seen all three EQG specials and not wishing to spoil on the offchance that anyone happens to read this post again prior to seeing them themselves, but not forget my thoughts while they're still relatively fresh...
My assessment of Sunset remains unchanged. I wouldn't say Sunset does anything outlandishly stupid (other than maybe taunting Juniper with an arrogant smirk even when Sunset herself had little to nothing to do with exposing her) or has Contrivance and Handwave throw her any huge lifelines (not that I noticed, at least, though there was Contrivance and Handwave), but she still doesn't win/succeed at anything through her own competence or demonstrate more than average intelligence, her few awkward, dopey moments (while adorable) doing more to show regression in that area. Even the part about Starlight Glimmer being better holds firm with her thoroughly upstaging Sunset in Mirror Magic, in both heroics and friendly wisdom.
2/17/2018 EDIT: At long last, Sunset has done something clever! (with qualifying statement...)
Spoilers for Forgotten Friendship.
Knowing that the villain has a memory-erasing mcguffin, she sets a camera-bot on the counter to record and leaves herself a note to watch the video, thus showing her what happened and allowing her and Trixie to catch the villain before it's too late!
The qualifying statement is that this relied on Twilight's camera robot just happening to be in the room and facing the right direction at the time and Sunset just happened to idly reach into her pocket at the right time, so Contrivance is still finding work, but other than that, it was still quick thinking, so props to Sunset for once! She has a lot of catching up to do to several other characters in terms of cleverness and this doesn't make her a 'genius' any more than threatening Wallflower makes her a 'badass,' but I felt like it was at least worth making a note.
Oh, and she does some stupid/self-defeating stuff too, but I've come to expect that at this point.
7/6/2018 EDIT:
I guess I'm just gonna keep doing this every time I have more thoughts to offer. Here's those for Roller Coaster of Friendship (or Our Title Guy Was Drunk Again And We Just Slapped Something On It)
This special gives us Sunset Is A Short-Tempered Fool Whose Only Magic-Free Success Comes Through Dumb Luck: The Carnival Game. It's practically canon now; she warns SciTwi (who again proves to be an idiot in her own special way; calculating the physics of a ring-toss game but repeatedly ignoring that it's blatantly rigged against her until after at least a hundred tries) that the game is rigged, ignores her own advice right after seeing the ring defy physics by leaping off the jar it was ringing around, and spends an uncertain amount of time and sanity points desperately trying to win anyway.
Just to put the cherry on it, when they do finally give up, she chucks the ring over her shoulder, which somehow lands the ring on a jar perfectly. Flim and Flam (I bet you knew they were the ones running it without even seeing the special) immediately use this fluke to attract more customers and scam more people.
3/30/2019 EDIT:
Good god, Rainbow is awful.
Not relevant to this blog, but I felt it needed to be said: Rainbow is awful. In need of a jackhammer lobotomy.
Anyway, if you came back to check this blog, you may be wondering if my opinion on Sunset changed at all due to her actions in Spring Breakdown. No, no it did not, because she doesn't make any great show of competence or incompetence this time, and I don't even think she did anything especially stupid. For the most part, she was just kind of there. Sunset doesn't really do anything an ordinary human couldn't do, beyond hijacking a crying little girl's memories rather than just asking what's wrong and how she can help (spoiler: a lone, crying child missing their parent when the whole ship is in chaos wasn't hard to guess WITHOUT unnecessary touching). The biggest contributions Sunset makes are leading Sci-Twi and Rainbow to the big, honking crystal tower in the middle of town and pushing her friends into quicksand.
In general, there's a minor deus ex machina in the form of a parrot guiding them to Rainbow after Rainbow does a Stupid again.
The involvement of the Storm King's magic is a complete clusterfuck. It "somehow" ends up in the human world, which "somehow" has a portal to Equestria in the sand on a random island that the cruise ship just happens to end up close to, the Equestria side of the portal just so happens to be within walking distance of Ponyville, Pri-Twilight just so happens to show them the Storm King's staff and symbol to reveal his dubious involvement because Rainbow just so happened to see his symbol in the water earlier, they instantly get back to the quicksand portal and hold up the staff, which instantly solves the Storm King problem, but not the sinking ship problem, which gets sorted out through what might be the very first time their super powers actually do any kind of good (except for Pinkie and Sunset). Rarity can create solid, permanent objects now, apparently, not just project temporary forcefields.
The writing is, as ever, really goddamn stupid, and if it were done in a fanfic, people would call it out as such, but what bothers me much more is that Rainbow's terrible behavior is all but validated and possibly encouraged when they decide they really are super heroes, ignoring that nothing was going wrong until Rainbow used magic, having already ruined the trip for everyone else for no better reason than to feed her own ego.
6/26/2019 EDIT:
Sunset's Backstage Pass doesn't have her doing anything especially stupid, but no bright moments either. Twilight makes her look pretty dim by riddling out that the problem that caused her time-loops (in the sense that it was what got her into them. The special doesn't quite explain how the use of yet another artifact out of nowhere hooked her and her alone along for the ride) was Pinkie in a matter of minutes where Sunset didn't for weeks.
Also, seriously Rarity, "lazy song-writing"? Rich coming from the group whose every song is the same schtick.
I think one of the reasons why Sunset Shimmer comes off as talented in the fandom to a lot of people is the result of people just filling in the blanks left in her overall backstory that are otherwise implied in the movies and comics.
And honestly? Why not? While I've enjoyed the EG movies (especially Rainbow Rocks), they're not shining examples of characterization and plot development and every character is overly simplified to some extent and some stuff honestly shouldn't be displayed in a movie aimed at children.
For example, in her time at CHS Sunset came to be known as a bully who, based on statements and evidence presented in the movie, ripped apart friendships because it amused her. While I personally would have liked to see this full on sadistic side and manipulation of hers in action, bullying itself can be a very real and traumatic experience for the victims, and I doubt Hasbro wanted to show, as an example, Sunset carefully planning and manipulating Fluttershy's burgeoning friendships to divide and isolate her from any positive social contact while tearing down her very limited self confidence for Sunset's own amusement. Results of stuff like this can be deep depression and thoughts on suicide-not exactly something Hasbro would want to advertise in its MLP tie in movies.
Point is, Hasbro gave us her general outline and, while a little generic, the various fandom's portrayals of her have made her into one of my favorite MLP characters.
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That's kind of my point here; fandom portrayals, not her actual merits have made her popular.
Only theory I can come up with is that Sunset wasn't Celestia's pupil for the same reasons Twilight was. Maybe she was good at performing spells not understanding them. Also, do we know how long Sunset was Celestia's pupil? 1 year won't give you the same experience and training as 15 years.
Overall you are right. Sunset (and several other characters in the EG universe) suffer from the fact that there's not much content outside the 4 movies. That prevents us from seeing character traits and developments that aren't in response to a magical conflict. My personal opinion is that an Equestria Girls tv show would provide a look into these characters in a way that movies can't do. Perhaps we will get that in the specials next year.
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True. Not helping at all is that Celestia herself doesn't have a great track record either.
Even a movie that isn't about big, magical lightshows for once could give us that much, a main conflict that doesn't center around ripping off Sailor Moon(?) for the umpteenth time. Maybe the Shadowbolts pop over to hang out and try to make good on the Friendship part of the Friendship games. Maybe the sirens return and no magic happens, pure slice-of-life stuff as they come forward to give up on the whole mad quest for power thing. Maybe Princess Twilight visits and there's some kind of tension between her and Sci-Twi, as well as confusion with Flash and his maybe-maybe-not renewed relationship with Sunset, Pri-Twi possibly even seeing it as a betrayal. Maybe all of the Element Bearers (two years later and I'm still calling them that) would like to pop over to see what this other dimension is like and shenanigans ensue.
And while I'm dreaming, I'd like a chocolate rocket that needs no fuel and never melts, no matter how many times I fly it through the sun.
Hrm...my gut reaction, as a Sunset Shimmer fan, is that a lot of your points can be resolved with a Doylist "writers are trying to tell a story within a very specific time limit so they use storytelling shorthand/tropes, but not in a clean way" argument, but that's not particularly satisfying, especially considering your very Watsonian approach. Alas, I don't have the energy for a lot of deep thought at the moment.
But I do have a comment for at least a few of your points:
Sunset spoofed text messages and did some amount of spying to know what to write in those texts, which is definitely above what I think the average teenager is capable of. And it implies a certain amount of fast learning on Sunset's part.
Also, you'd be surprised with how stupid people are when you have even the slightest amount of skill in social engineering. Like, being able to enter a secure facility just by looking like you belong levels of stupid.
This isn't Sunset being stupid, it's her acting in accordance to one of her character flaws. Post!EQG1 Sunset is terrible at pushing an issue with her friends, even if the end result would be beneficial, such as in EQG2 when Sunset could have probably resolved the group conflict way earlier if she actually spoke her mind or getting Twilight to open up about Midnight Sparkle.
I think a lot of fanon!Sunset can attributed to the complete lack of information surrounding the lack of knowledge about her living situation and the assumption that EQG earth is roughly similar to our earth.
(Also hi I'm sort of new to fimfiction please let me know if this comment is in breach of fimfiction etiquette
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Does it? Full points for figuring out the technology of an alien world (unless someone just walked her through it all, possibly a nice guy she found to exploit shortly after arrival, but we can't say that for sure), but we don't know how long it took her to pull it all off, be it days, weeks, or months. She couldn't have been a complete moron if Applejack's comments about her 'niceness-then-backstab' routine are any indicator, but even then, I'm pretty sure her plans only worked on account of-
that. How smart does she have to be if everyone else is (as fits with your last example, no questions apparently asked about where she came from or any parents/paperwork needed) so dim that it barely matters what she does?
I think there's a difference between not saying anything while she's still extremely unsure of herself and casually letting increasingly dangerous magic slide for a while. Still, maybe that isn't her being stupid, per se (I actually left out her going along with Twilight's secret for that reason), it's her doubts/uncertainties leading her to do some stupid things. I'll admit, that one's kind of iffy.
It would certainly make more sense if she got by through clever thinking, but that we don't see it means we have to essentially guess that answer ourselves, so I can't count it as something she does on her own.
(Hi! If you're breaching anything at all, I haven't picked up on what it could be in my 3 years here, so no worries, and welcome to Fimfic!
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4252226
You may think it can only be a dream, but we are getting 3 specials instead of 1 movie next year, which means they might be changing things up with the EG universe. That means that just about anything's possible.
4252309
...Cinch coming out as a world-championship hula-dancer!
Or just general slice of life stuff, that'd be great too.
Well yes, they are called teenagers.
After four years I now finally understand that line in S2E2.
"I heard your world has this weird thing called democracy and does terrible things to people who stand in its way."
The reformed villain thing was new at the time though. Starlight Glimmer didn't yet exist, and Discord, eeeeeeeeh, I am not sure what to think of him.
H E R E S Y
E..............S
R..............E
E..............R
S..............E
Y S E R E H
BACKSTORY! MONTAGE SONG!
Please do. She was stellar in No Second Prances and the recent finale, but apart from that, I don't see it.
Edit: Incidentally, I recently made a similar post on reddit where I mentally reconstructed the reasons for me becoming a Sunset Shimmer fan in the first place. Boy, this season finale really seems to have hit a note in all Sunny fans, hasn't it? Here it is if you care.
TL;DR
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In short? The point of this blogpost was that Sunset isn't really all that great when you get right down to it, "better than Sunset" is a low bar to meet, my reasons for thinking so are listed above, so Starlight doesn't actually have to do all that much to surpass her. I think the last few paragraphs sum it up, but maybe some day I'll find the time to look at Starlight more closely and find that there's something I missed.
For now, though, I think I'll focus on writing fun, silly stories in my downtime, at least when not responding to comments.
4252331 But the backstory! And the montage!
4252337
Neither of their backstories were anything outstanding, but even there, I think Glimmer might have her beat (throwing a tantrum when not getting her way vs. GOING INSANE when losing one friend), and if you're referring to My Past is Not Today, I didn't care for it. Sorry.
I wish EQG was anywhere near the vicinity of a Sailor Moon rip off, because then we might get real fighting in the fight scenes and spectacular apocalypses. Precure, a franchise often called a Sailor Moon rip off (it's not, but Sailor Moon did codify a lot of the magical girl genre conventions), is for the same age and gender demographic as MLP and they get actual fights scenes in their movies
4252284
I'm of the mind that you need to be smart to take advantage of stupidity. But I don't think there's a satisfying canon answer here, but it does make for interesting discussion.
I'm probably going to jaunt off for now, but I did find your blog post interesting and insightful!
Well, I've read through the entire blog post first, and while I disagree that Sunset's no smarter than average, I think your finale theory might have some weight to it. First the disagreement:
-About 80-90% of the points you made that could be summarized as "lazy writing and contrivances that benefit the protagonist" affect all the Rainbooms, and various Twilights at different times. Vinyl Scratch's selective hearing and transformer car benefitted all the Rainbooms, or probably the rest of the town (the Sirens would almost certainly never have gotten farther than a single town, before a deaf person with a sniper rifle figures out what's going on), not just Sunset.
- Lazy and contrived writing penalized Sunset too. If Sunset hadn't happened to have dropped the crown the second she walked through the portal and Fluttershy grabbed it, she could have activated it while Twilight was still being briefed on the other side of the mirror.
Details suggesting Sunset is fairly smart:
-We don't see Sunset being an expert manipulator, but we can infer it from the fact that she has won all the little prom princess contests for several years running. Maybe everyone at CHS has an IQ of 60, but that would still make Sunset smarter than average.
-She was smart enough to plan and execute a heist in a castle that had not existed the last time she was in that dimension. Sure, Equestrian security sucks, but do you really think the average person could have handled reverting to their previous form, stealthily scouting out and locating the magical artifact you are looking for, and remembering enough magic to escape the Princess of Magic? (And that was all in Equestria, not an articial demi-plane where probability favors her).
-Yeah, her conquest plan was unbelievably, impossibly stupid. That's why there's a theory that the original plan was just escape to safety in human world, activate crown to achieve alicornification, return to Equestria and force Celestia to recognize Sunset as a Princess by fait accompli. Then she overdosed on magic and began acting stupid, like SciTwi, Gloriousa, Trixie have as well. I'm not saying the first plan is a brilliant plan, it's just better than "conquer Equestria with zombie teenagers."
-The entire subtext of the 2nd movie was that Sunset was feeling incredibly full of self doubt and sure that she couldn't contribute, and that only others could save the day, right up until that ridiculous ending.
-Third movie: Yeah, Sunset lost the math contest against SciTwi. SciTwi, who has been studying math instead of magic her entire life and might possibly be the smartest human alive. And look at a shot of their two boards, both have written out incredibly complicated equations and proofs to try and solve the answer, and they both look equally plausible. That's college level math major stuff there, the fact that she even knew how to look for the answer is pretty impressive, even if she made a mistake. Yeah, Sunset got it wrong, she's quite possibly not as smart as SciTwi, but she earned enough points in all the other academic events that she was able to advance anyway, something no one else did.
-The shorts where Sunset is investigating magic shows Sunset following proper scientific protocol, and the magic behaves in an almost willfully disruptive fashion, so Sunset is unable to understand a entire new branch of physics in the few days Luna gives her between the pep rally and the actual games.
-4th movie I got nothing, you're right about the glowing crystals. I blame Spike the talking dog for making Sunset believe she was now in a Scoobie Doo movie.
Thing is, I think the idea that this is a magical demiplane created for Sunset Shimmer, or out of her subconscious, is quite plausible. It explains the weird rate of time passage and the doubles of everyone despite a radically different history better than anything. Certainly there is enough time for the sirens to arrive after Sunset first does, since both were there for at least a year or two. I just think Sunset is clearly an extremely intelligent individual.
Harsh but fair. If I don't take the easy route of saying it's just writer stupidity (an option I've never liked) I can't really think of anything to rebut your arguments that doesn't, in some way, rely on assumptions that could be horribly mistaken and easily dismissed. I don't particularly like it and, as you said yourself, I will likely continue to view her as intelligent since, otherwise, her character would be a bit dull. Excellent sleuthing.
4252353 Huh? I am talking about Starlight's backstory and the song that ended season 5, where all the stuff that could have filled entire episodes was just compressed into five seconds clips of a montage.
4252383
Have you actually taken a closer look at those equasions? They are just basic trigonometry. If that is college level math for you I really don't envy your country's education system.
4252433 That's not a basic geometry problem, it's one of the hardest Euclidean Geometry problems there is to solve, not a lot of high school kids in any country need to solve radical axes without a calculator.
4252442 Hm, maybe my own high school education in a central European country was just above the global average then, because I'm pretty sure this seems like something we would have done in math. It's just calculating angles from other angles, I don't get what's supposed to be so hard about that. Seems appropriate for a competition with a time limit in a high school but not really college.
It's just as true the second time I hear it. Everything about the EG world will make so much more sense when the writers finally admit it.
Honestly, though, you make some excellent points here. I really feel like I shouldn't be so surprised given how much thought you've clearly put into topics like this, but it's really, really hard to refute your general conclusion. I remember thinking that Sunset was one of the high points of Rainbow Rocks, but in hindsight, that's probably because I went into that movie both completely blind and completely convinced that it was going to be absolutely terrible. I was wrong, obviously, but I feel like I expected the C&H elements to just magically make the whole world forgive her for everything and so I was pleasantly surprised to see that she at least had some kind of struggle to find acceptance, even if in a lot of ways it was a very conveniently achievable struggle. As much as I enjoyed Discord and Starlight's reformations, it always bugged me that nobody was at least a little bit skeptical and it was to see that wasn't the case with Sunset.
The idea of the whole EG world being one that quite literally reshapes itself to better serve Sunset is quite an amusing one. I'd have a very hard time taking a story seriously if that theory were made explicit, but it's certainly an enlightening thought.
Now, I would love to say that I had a lot more to say, but you've just done such a good job compiling everything that I really don't have much to add that other comments haven't already contributed. So... I guess I'll just end here by thanking you for putting in the time and effort to make this hugely informative and extremely thought-provoking post.
4252461 I'm not aware of any country in the OECD that still teaches Euclydean Geometry at the proofs level in high school. I'm not saying that you couldn't have calculated it, just that it's a particularly difficult method for solving the problem that is rarely taught these days for that reason.
I once read an interesting article about Sherlock Holmes, where it was pointed out that quite a lot of times, his deductions work because the author wants them to, not because the logical chain is solid. One example is from the hound of the baskervilles where he makes a comments line "I see from your fingers that you roll your own cigarettes". And while it is possible to deductions that someone is a smoker from the fingers, that is quite a far claim.
My point? The writers want us to think that Sunset is a genius. And while it doesn’t stand against a logical examination, it still works because she is a working charachter. Starlight...just isn't. And so, we like Sunset Shimmer because we want to, not because we should.
This ended up much longer than I anticipated, and I wrote it in the middle of the night, so sorry about the mess and any weirdness in it. Anyways here are my two cents on this.
First, before I get into countering some of the points, I'd like to share my stance on the MLP fanon. A lot of the most popular fanon characters, including Trixie, Ditzy, Time Turner, and Celestia have done nothing in the show to earn their fanon places (well, apparently Trixie did, but I stopped watching the show partly through season 5, except for the season 6 finale). In the case of Trixie, there was enough of a personality to go off of and plenty of room for headcanon, and what made the MLP community so strong is the amount of fan work. She was a prime fanon material and took off. As for Ditzy, she was a fun game with some controversy thrown in, so she took off as well. Time Turner was given Doctor Who as a character and it stuck. Now Celestia is the fun one. From what we've seen in the show, she's nothing great. First, the only fights she wins were with Luna's help or the Elements. She loses to Discord numerous times, lost to Nightmare Moon multiple times, lost to Tirek, lost to Chrysalis (and maybe regular changelings), and to vines (that were in Ponyville), after proving to be a bad judge of character, yet the fanon portrays her as an extremely powerful goddess. She's also shown making many questionable decisions, like inviting Twilight and her friends to the Gala with the intent of them causing chaos, near Discord's statue, for her own amusement, sending Twilight without Luna to save the Crystal Empire as a test, not Discord proofing the Elements, the entire Canterlot Wedding fiasco, not telling anyone about Philomena, and using Discord to fight Tirek. Again, the fanon portrays her very differently. As for the main characters, the show itself is very inconsistent with its depiction of them, so the fanon gets multiple interpretations to work with. We have very little actual rules on the universe, be it how magic works, what the Princess do, what's with the Royal Guard, or even if there are laws at all. That's what makes the fanfiction so great (well that, the Touhou/Mother levels of dedication, and the much better websites than fanfiction.net), as there is very little to actually work with most of the time, so the community creates what it likes off of it.
Now for the points themselves. First, I haven't seen the first movie yet, though I did see the final battle and a bunch of scenes from it, so I won't be going too much into detail. However, I can confirm that a lot of the behavior from the students do match highschool behavior. People turn on eachother like that all the time like that (I've seen it happen several times), people like Sunset are ignored by anyone not directly effected, people get scared, and faculty tends to not have the best track record (unless the students are friendly with the teachers, in which case it tends to work out, but the victim taking the blame or being ignored happens pretty often). Also, the crown did affect her mentally, as one, the transformation was against her will (she was crying, trying to stop it, and it vaporized her tears, so it most of been burning) and went from not willing to threaten Spike to outright attempted murder. The same happened with Sci-Twi, who went from wanting to understand magic, to trying to destroy the world to do it, even thought she could've just opened up a portal, flew through it, and closed it. Also, the Equestrian magic allowed Twilight and the others to resist Sunset's demon powers, so why not the Siren's?
As for all the conveniences, the main show is just as bad, if not worse. First, Nightmare Moon just so happens to be the first villain to return, with all her attempts at interfering leading Twilight to figure out her friends were the bearers of the Elements of Harmony. The next villain is Discord, who they still have the Elements to fight. Next is the Canterlot Wedding, where Shining Armor and Princess Cadance are introduced (who are a much bigger plot device ass pull than the book from Rainbow Rocks, especially after Prince Blueblood was just a unicorn and neither Cadence or Shining Armor were at the Gala). After another bumbling set of conveniences, Twilight (with no real help from her friends) unites Shining Armor and Cadance to random magic the problems away. Move onto the Crystal Empire, where the premise itself is rather shaky (all that convenient memory magic and lack of knowledge on Celestia's part), finding the right book with a missing page (why not destroy the entire book if sabotage, otherwise, what are the odds), and being right after Cadence and Shining Armor were introduced. Also, it was the only time Spike was brought along in the show, and he ended up saving the day. Next come the Pludervines (with the random zebra alicorn past vision potion) after Discord was reformed and the Elements were found, which conveniently only capture Celestia and Luna in their sleep. Cue returning the Elements to the Tree, getting the magic box, which they get all but one key for right before Tirek shows up, blows up the library, and leads Discord into creating the final key. Then Starlight Glimmer happens from the new magic map, who can strip talents because she can (when they leave Spike behind, who could've easily solved the problem), and manages to BS a spell that allows her to travel through time using the random magic map and actually change the past (something Twilight couldn't do), and duel Twilight to a standstill, then see her backstory (which is Applebloom's first episode) so she can be taken in as a friendship student, meet Trixie and Thorax, and (season 6 finale spoilers) be out of town for a random holiday and instantly come back in the small time frame in which literally everyone important gets captured except her, nothing happens to her in her sleep, and she manages to get together with just the three characters who can help her save the day, two of which she barely knows, one of who is the only good changeling who she just so happened to see that he was good, and who was able to guide them through the magic hive, where Starlight sacrificed her friends and tried to break the magic eating throne with a rock instead of sacrificing herself and having the changeling with magic try to break it so that Thorax could randomly magic into a new creature and get all the changelings to join him. Also the Rainboom giving everyone their Cutie Marks. Basically, the movies random save everything magic is basically the same as in the show.
Now onto whether Sunset is smart or not. First, I'm not counting any of the comics or novelizations (she's apparently a genius in Sunset Shimmer's Time to Shine), just the movies and shorts. She's been shown to be good with using technology in making the video to try to humilate Twilight, managing to frame the humane 5 into hating each other, and setting up equipment to get readings on magic in a formerly mostly magicless world and getting actual readings, at least before the magic attacked her and blew up all her equipment. She's the only one to actually say that figuring out the magic is more important than the Friendship Games or the camp, though that's more a strike against everyone else. Also, during the math problem, she had everything right (or at least matching Twilight and mostly right, I was too lazy to check all the work due to the body blocking and camera angles) until the very end, where she messed up x + 30 = 50. She put x = 30, which is a mistake that's very easy to slip up on under time pressure, especially after she did everything else right. Now, the problem itself was a disappointingly simple geometry (I'm pretty sure all high schools have Calculus, at least ones as well off as Canterlot High and Crystal Prep), but in the montage, Twilight and Sunset put the same effort in it (also the Spelling Bee words were rather easy for a big competition like that), which puts Sunset just below Twilight in math (same problem, same time to completion, and just a goof up at the very last step under pressure). Throughout the series, we only see one scene of a classroom, at Crystal Prep during Twilight's song (and a paper Dash got a D on in the Holiday Special), so we don't get to see anything there. Also, the six remaining at the Spelling Bee/Math thing were the six with the most points, as we saw Ditzy, Flash, and the eco kid get eliminated before hand. Also, she survived and adapted to an alien world in an unfamiliar body, without any from Equestria, so that probably deserves some credit. Plus, she's one of three unicorns seen teleporting (not even Celestia or Luna do that).
As for her being oblivious to the Dazzlings, Sci-Twi, and Gloriosa? Remember the target demographic. The movies through in painfully obvious clues for the kids, which leads to exaggerated situations so they can solve it first. The best examples I can think of from the main show are the mane 6 showing their elements in the premier, obvious fake Cadence, Starlight Glimmer's Town, and the keys to the box. While the sirens are very suspicious acting, she had no reason to believe they were magical or evil (she is friends with Pinkie and Trixie goes to the same school) so besides Sonata's line (which was probably more for humor than plot) which Sunset has no reason to take as magical creatures from Equestria bent on world domination, just weird eccentric students. Her one interaction with them isn't enough for any judgement, especially from her (as she still hates herself and is filled with self doubt). Besides, they reveal themselves the very next scene. As for Gloriosa, again Sunset has no reason to suspect her. The first mind read bump, she heard a screech before she had mind reading powers. She and Twilight were the only ones to even notice or care something was wrong, but Twilight was stuck on thinking she did it. Timber was the obvious suspect, as again, Sunset didn't know she could read minds, knew something was up, and the only physical evidence she had pointed towards him (and even then, she tried to confirm before acting on it). Heck, I'm still pretty sure the Gaia Everfree story was made up (as she never actually appears and the transformation doesn't match).
As for some of the other weird things? The book could've been sent to Twilight after getting the message (the group was waiting for awhile to get a response, though I'm more weirded out by the lack of any mention of Celestia, especially since the letter was addressed to her). Vinyl Scratch was just fan pandering (if Trixie being the number 3 band, all the Ditzy moments, and the Under Our Spell montage weren't enough like in Slice of Life), and Spike pulled the same stunt in the Crystal Empire. The way Sunset became the angel thing through the same device that turned Sci-Twi into a monster reflects the end of the first movie, where the Element of Magic turns Sunset into a monster, but Twilight uses the same power, but with friendship (I'm pretty sure the magic the tracker absorbed was the same magic from the first movie, so it should act the same). The no one will believe the magic bit with Cinch was if she tried to argue the tie with the school board, I'm pretty sure Celestia would've come up with something else to tell them other than the students saved the world (though to be fair, that should've been a win for Canterlot High, or the could've actually still held the final event, though I think everyone would be happy with a tie at that point). The Embrace the Magic bit was not anything ridiculous, as their powers already matched them and what they do, so all they had to do was accept them and get used to them. I mean, Fluttershy had nothing to worry about, Applejack just had to not put her full strength into things, Rainbow Dash already flew fast, Pinkie had to not throw sugary items, and Rarity just had to be cautious with dramatic gestures. Plus, they don't instantly master their powers (they screw up in the final battle), they are just able to use them in a controlled environment. As for the magic crystals, all I can say is Rainboom based cutie marks = Elements Bearers, so nothing new there. The only really weird one is why the Sirens took so long to get to Canterlot High. As for the demon take over plan, I can see a few ways of it working. The first is magically taking over everyone she see's (she is powered by the Element of Magic), so I can see her be strong enough to take out the Princesses (Celestia basically never won a fight on her own and the only none Elements of Harmony victories she had were against Sombra, which may have had the Elements, and against Tirek, with his brother's help). The Royal Guards have never been shown to be competent either. Without the Elements of Harmony, and against an ever growing army, she had a real chance (basically the Sombra bad future). Or of course, a much darker plan that would never make it into the show, she could've used the lives of the brainwashed minors as hostages, forcing Celestia to either surrender or have the deaths of hundreds of innocent minors on her hooves. Besides, the magic made Twilight and Gloriosa (and Trixie with the alicorn amulet and Rarity with the dark magic book) go crazy, so it stands to reason the same happened to her.
As for why the fanon loves Sunset. First of all, her background leaves plenty of room for headcanons (how did she survive in the human world, what about her family, how powerful is she, and so on). Also, she has a massive character shift between the two movies, allowing for the fandom to fill in the blanks. She goes through a redemption arc, and actually suffers consequences for her actions (Trixie got punished for something she didn't do, seriously, she just put on a show and because the arrogant main characters didn't like her arrogant character that the rest of the town liked, she got all the punishment for two idiots bringing in a dangerous beast into the city, then when she tried to get revenge, got possessed by an evil artifact, made up with Twilight afterwords, except then she didn't come her next appearance... Also, Luna's consequences and entire character were made up as the writers felt like using her. None of her early appearances hint at anything that comes later. Discord only suffers any consequences for a little bit after betraying everyone to Tirek), but soldiers on through and becomes the hero (everyone loves the underdog). Basically, she's a former villain, underdog, implied genius, filled with other implications (like how Sci-Twi suffered through the nightmares and self doubt but got through with Sunset's help, while Sunset didn't have anyone to help her and instead had friends constantly remind her of it, the school hate her, and still soldiering through, while never getting jealous of Sci-Twi, or how Princess Twilight spent her first trip sleeping in the library and never seeing where Sunset lives, besides the Holiday Special which implies she lives in the library). The expanded universe stuff and most direct foil to Twilight also give her a lot of fanon power.
As for her biggest strength? She's the most (is not only) empathetic character in the series. She's the only one who regularly notices when others are suffering, always defers to her friends against her own wishes (she doesn't care about the Friendship Games, but still gives it her all for her friends, even though she has things more important to her and in general to do, and doesn't want to ruin her friends' time in camp by studying the magic or dragging them into finding out what's going on), and never gives in or gives up, even after her friends never stood up for her or really even trusted her in Rainbow Rocks. That's the reason why Sunset is my favorite MLP character (well that and the fact that Twilight gets hit with the idiot stick too often and is a bit Mary Sue-ish, while Spike suffers from being a completely different character based on the writer, going from Lesson Zero and Equestria Girls Spike to Spike At Your Service and Power Ponies Spike, often being completely forgotten about...). She went through genuine growth that stuck. After being torn down from her rule by the one who accomplished everything she wanted and being torn apart by the Element of Magic, she made a genuine effort to reform (not blackmailed into it like Discord or retconned like Luna), while the school was against her (unlike Starlight, who basically got off scot-free for attempting a brainwashing cult and nearly destroying Equestria multiple times for revenge), her friends weren't exactly great, and she had to deal with her own guilt and self doubt. She never got jealous of the others for having magic, and the only time she got exploded at someone was when after having to deal with failing at accomplishing her magic task without support (the same thing that happened to Twilight in Rainbow Rocks), her friends almost got killed due to Sci-Twi's recklessness. Plus, she went full circle, from being the one who turned into a monster through magic because of her ambition, to saving someone who fell into the same fate, leading that person to do the same. Well, that's my two cents.
OH DEAR GOD,i've seen stories shorter than this blogpost. The reason I like sunset more than starlight is simply that her backstory is something I can empathize with and isn't explicitly fleshed out enough to deny all kinds of fanfic opportunities. Glimmer explicitly had a dumb reason for doing horrible things and is being overhyped in the main show. Thats probably a good thing, if she werent there it would be sunnybun doing it, and the writers drop the ball more than a basketball player.
TLDR sunset is more relatable and as such more interesting for me to read about.
4252353 First of all let me say that you make very interesting points in hour blog post and while my own opinion matches that of Blazeblast4, I can easily see that I my love for Sunset as a character may be affecting my judgement. I'd also.like to state that I don't particularly mind Starlight Glimmer as a character (aside from her ridiculous and abrupt magical growth for no reason whatsoever), I guess I just haven't seen enough of her to get a grasp on her personality (which seems to me, changes drastically episode by episode).
Secondly; a statement and a question. Why do people view as Sunset's motivation for becoming 'evil' was a temper tantrum? She always had lots of ambition and was presumably Celestia's protege for years. Here I am kind of assuming that when people refer to someone as 'Celestia's pupil', that's what they mean as Celestia doesn't seem to actually teach at her school for gifted unicorns herself.
Before reading further know that my recollection of Sunset's origin comic may not be perfect and also that this turned out much longer than I intended it to be.
So we have this highly ambitious unicorn studying under Celestia for presumably years (I am unsure about the passage of time in the comic) and then getting shown a mirror by Celestia herself that depicts Sunset as an alicorn. I don't think that it would be a huge logic leap for her (or anyone) to then begin to assume that the alicorn that had taken Sunset under her wing (especially since we don't know if Sunset's parents exist or not) was grooming Sunset to stand by her side in alicorn-hood.
After showing Sunset the mirror however, Celestia constantly avoids the subject for months without explaining why. As well as slowing or stopping Sunset's lessons in order to get Sunset to make friends, something Sunset has never needed before, nor cared about. I think this sets plenty premise to justify Sunset's thinking that Celestia was holding her back and explains Sunset going behind Celestia's back to try and advance her education by herself since she saw Celestia as unwilling to help her.
Now if tensions weren't high enough, as soon as Celestia finds Sunset and Sunset inevitably blows up at her, demanding she be made into an alicorn, Celestia's response is to kick Sunset out (a justified response to be sure). However, I don't know about you, but I feel that after working hard for a goal you thought your teacher had set, only to have your teacher stop helping you and then kick you out is ample reason for Sunset's fury against Celestia and subsequently Twilight Sparkle as well Sunset's reasoning for being who she was is significantly stronger than 'a temper tantrum'.
4252361
So the solution to the instant-win brand of heroics is actually more magical girl stuff. D'oh!
In the sense that a kid with a laser pointer can be smarter than a cat?
That's something, I guess!
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Nothing was benifiting the town or Sunset's friends until it was time to become her friends, which is why I think this thing is centered on Sunset.
...I'm sorry, what? A deaf sniper out of nowhere is a likely scenario to you? What gives you the impression that sharpshooters with no hearing just so happen to watch every town everywhere? This statement is complete nonsense.
She didn't happen to drop the crown, she was tripped while fleeing with it because she was being pursued and Twilight made the active decision to try to tackle her. I'm also a little perplexed as to why you seem to think Sunset's flaws can be dismissed as lazy writing, but her barely-existent intellect should be taken as completely legitimate.
But when we see it in practice, the methods she's been using all that time are lacking at best, a joke at worst, but apparently, it all worked no matter what.
You do realize that's not much of a point in her favor? "She's so smart!" holds no weight when everyone else is really dense.
You mean she was (conveniently) omniscient enough to know about the crown and Twilight's princess status despite having no feasible means of learning these things, let alone showing it to the viewers, then creep around in the hours that everyone but the less-than-alert guards are asleep in search of it? Even if she pulled it off, that doesn't signify intelligence, it signifies that she can be quiet, again putting her on the level of maybe Fluttershy at best.
I don't think changing back into a pony would be that taxing, muscle memory doing most of the work, and 'remembering enough magic to escape the princess of magic' boiled down to teleporting out of her grip and continuing to run away.
Theories are nice, but I'm talking hard facts, what the audience can actually observe in her behavior. You can spin it as her having had a better plan (despite all those miserable failures), and you can spin it as her having genuinely been clueless about what she was doing. As Celestia had three other princesses on her side, and Discord, I don't see a reason she'd have had to accept anything Sunset tried to push, or more importantly, anything to show the audience that that was her actual plan, not an attempt at justifying another of Sunset's stupid moments.
Which means she didn't show us any brilliant moments, but we did get to observe her stupid ones.
Having at least a vague idea of what she's doing signifies particular intelligence?
Yes, they did. All of the other Rainbooms. And the Shadowbolts. Should we count all of them as geniuses too? At least Crystal Prep's students can say they come from an advanced school, so all of them, even Lemon Zest, being smarter than your average bear is actually kind of feasible. Sunset, however, we don't see doing anything that no one else does, other than failing the equation, so her doing well is, again, something you just have to assume, not something you can observe. Do you kind of see the basis of my reasoning here?
What makes you say she was following a protocol more complicated than "Let's see what this does"? Do you have a detail you can definitively point out, one that proves she can at least follow a procedure? (not that following instructions requires an especially bright mind anyway) Her task may not have been an easy one, but failing doesn't show us anything as far as her intellect goes.
I think it's feasible, hence sharing it, but please keep in mind that this only a theory and in all likelihood, the writers haven't put nearly as much thought into it. You're probably right regarding lazy writing, but if so, can we really attribute any quality, good or bad, to anyone?
Is Rainbow actually a good flier, or is it lazy writing making everyone else look mediocre? Are the things that take out Celestia really powerful, or is it lazy writing with the Worf effect? That bag of worms.
Even though canon continues to show otherwise? I'm sorry, but in going through the material, I've gotten the impression that she's average (for a normal, sensible human being, not the borderline lemmings her world is populated by) at best.
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Glad it was an enjoyable read!
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That's kind of what I'm getting at; we're not wowed by her prowess, but the one we create in our heads. I think this might be because she was so darn cute in the promos for Rainbow Rocks that it was hard not to take a liking to her, and fan behavior being what it is, we wanted to see her positive qualities shine from there. But that's just a guess.
I'm not sure if Starlight is functionally better than Sunset, but I say it in the context that Sunset isn't great to begin with and Starlight has pulled off some good stuff recently.
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An elite living in a castle and demanding more is more relatable than someone who does something crazy after losing a cherished friend? Noted, but my point here is that Sunset isn't particularly smart or amazing, which, as few of us are, I guess is pretty relatable.
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Several paragraphs is your two cents? Welcome, kindred spirit!!
A lot of characters are overrated, yes, part of my point here is that Sunset is very much one of them.
At best, this shows us that Luna and Celestia aren't exactly on the ball, which happens to work to Sunset's favor. I don't know if it's unrealistic for people to be that easily manipulated, even close friends suddenly accepting having nothing to do with each other, but it's sure convenient for her that such flimsy methods work. Maybe the M.O. of this show is that friendship has no power or meaning at all until the protagonists show up to share it with the locals, that no one can figure out getting along and being kind to each other without an expert to show them first. I've kind of gotten that vibe from some of the Cutie Map episodes.
If that's the case, though, then maybe that example isn't a matter of convenience for Sunset so much as just the way their slightly odd world works.
My guess is that the Sirens were using their own power, a form of magic they'd been using for quite a while and actually had a good grip on. Sunset, Twilight, and Gloriosa did not, weren't ready for what they took, and went insane.
However, that demonstrates neither skill nor intellect on Sunset's part.
True, but I think it goes double for Sunset in the other world.
I addressed all of these points above. A normal teenager today is 'good with using technology' by that standard, all it took were a few lies and possibly stealing and replacing of cellphones, just a quick text message to break them all up and make them not feel like even trying to sort things out afterward, and her 'readings' were wobbly lines on screens and scribbles on a clipboard. This tells me that she's 'Hollywood' smart (Ie: knows how to work gadgets and gizmos and other 'smart people' things) at best.
No matter the reason, Sunset failing does not show us her intelligence. I really wish she'd just been a little too slow in this scene, because Sci-Twi had even more pressure, which she was shown not to handle well when doing something she wasn't fluent in, and apparently pulled the problem off without a hitch. Maybe doing the math problem for Sunset was like archery for Twilight?
She does get credit for not dying in a ditch without her magic, but quite a lot of people have survival instinct. You can guess that it must mean she's smart, but if the world just works for her (my reasons for thinking so given above), I'd be more surprised to learn she did have some genuine difficulty. She certainly hasn't said anything of the sort herself.
Her being less observant than the kids watching is not a point in her favor.
Other than the increasingly manic behavior?
Yes, the only physical evidence other than magic going crazy (unless she thought Timber was Scooby-Doo-ing that up too? Even when Twilight was using it?) and Gloriosa's evasive answers when questioned on what she's doing at times, as well as Filthy Rich's ominous appearances.
Could've been. Meaning we had to guess that part. Even if that's the case, the whole stack of books arrived at the same time, which, as it's shown to take a train to get to Canterlot (with the delivery pony), might have been upwards of at least a day if the MMMystery Express (that train mystery episode, in which I'm pretty sure they went from Ponyville to Canterlot overnight) meant anything. Were the sirens not doing anything in all that time, or did Twilight just so happen to get the book that particular day. If Celestia teleported it to her, why would she put it on the stack of books rather than right in front of Twilight with a letter asking her to address it?
Addressed above. Sorry for the terse answers, but I've been at this for at least an hour and a half.
Yes, for which they go from scared and uncertain to no problems at all.
They looked like they had a pretty solid handle on it to me. Not that it made any difference, of course.
Even if it had worked, going nuts and storming with brute force do not demonstrate a cunning intellect or particularly skillful leadership.
I never said there were no reasons to like her, just that neither her finesse or brilliance are one of them.
I think you have a point here, but that's not what I see people praising her for nearly as often, which is what spurred this blogpost.
4252618
Because if she'd been patient and sensible, she'd have probably gotten what she wanted, as opposed to deciding that she wanted it all right now, like a kid demanding desert before dinner?
Yes, and while showing Sunset the mirror and then telling her to forget about it wasn't brilliant on Celestia's part either, Sunset tried to skip straight to the end without understanding more than power = princess.
Working hard, sure, but not hard enough to earn what she thought she'd earned, which is the part she completely ignores in all her pride. It's like someone working for a while on a book report, thinking it to be perfect, and only getting a B, and rather than assessing their flaws, taking it all out on the instructor, demanding a perfect grade, and getting expelled for their antics.
Why does the fanon like Sunset and think she's so smart? Well that's very much easy to explain.
Everyone in the human world is either an idiot, a flanderized/season 1 version of their character, or mostly both. {I don't want to hear human Rarity continue to just go on and on about dresses. Not even season 1 Rarity was that one note.} Because everyone's an idiot, Sunset just looks smart and has more common sense. Now do I believe she's intelligent.
Academically, yes. Given that we see her spend most of her time studying in her comic, I can safely say she knows her way around plenty of magic and other topics. Outside of academics, definitely not.
I'm still surprised everyone fell for it, but again, human characters are kind of idiots most of the time. She wouldn't really have any experience or know how to effectively control people since she seemed to make a note of avoiding others.
It's funny that, given that Sunset's one of my fave characters, I'm agreeing with pretty much the whole thing. I think I lost a ton of steam with Sunset when a bunch of her fellow fans kept attacking Starlight like 'it was their duty' to the point that I almost gave up on Sunset. I do find Starlight a more interesting character. I thought her reformation and backstory actually made sense the more I thought about it. Actually, I liked it the first time I saw it and was kind of surprised by how much everyone hated her so much.
If I had to say something about Sunset, she seemed more like a Luna copy then have any relation to Starlight.
-Went villainous for personal and selfish reasons
-Had a personal connection with Celestia, before confronting her and thus embarking on a dark path
-Both turned into demons in their quest for more power
-purified by elements
-Tearful apology surrounded by the ruins of their defeat
I would say I've come to enjoy Sunset more then Luna, but that's more because the show dropped her more interesting aspects in Luna Eclipsed to make her more of a copy of Celestia. This is why I prefer to read the comic variations of her.
So yeah, I actually do very much prefer and sympathize more with Starlight, even though I do enjoy Sunset. She's basically the only reason I watch EQG. {I really don't like Sci-Twi though and she's making me question whether I should continue with that series of movies.}
4252477 Well it's been a few years, and my high school was pretty focussed on the hard sciences, so maybe that's the reason.
4252660
That's kinda what I was getting at, yea. If Sunset is the smartest cookie in the jar, it's because she's the only one that hasn't crumbled yet.
I have to admit that it's hard not to be soured on characters when their fans get... over-enthusiastic. I actually left the Sunset Shimmer group because of this and there were times I started to flat-out hate Sonata Dusk. Lost a bit of love for Maud Pie, too.
Luna and Sunset do have the same Satanic archtype thing going; alliance with the highest force of good, falling to pride, and everything going wrong from there. Starlight might have been out of her mind ("Friend leaves me because cutie mark, cutie marks are evil!" ? You silly pony.), but she was certainly something new with her philosophy-based start of darkness.
4252665 All the love Sonata gets did get a bit grating as she was always the 'innocent' one. It's why I made her a psychopathic killer even as a young baby in my own story. Just to liven it up. Thankfully, my love for Maud is still intact since I haven't done much to interact with other Maud fans or seen them act so crazy, just me personally.
As for Starlight, eh she was a kid. Kids tend to make hasty and, in hindsight, questionable choices. I think people seem to miss that fact as well that she herself stated that she didn't come up with the philosophy overnight. She just withdrew herself from others so not to feel the pain and that ideology just came about over several years of repressed sadness/anger. It really does make her an interesting character and I could and have written a number of essays about her. {Even got an A in one class by doing so.} So yeah, I do agree that she was something new and welcome to which is why she's my fave thus far.
As well, that's why I write my Shimmerverse Sunset as pretty much a social idiot, but an intellectual and magical genius who has an incredibly bad temper problem to the point that 'fire' is basically her answer to many problems. {As much as I like Sunset, I kind of wish they kept some of her fury. She does snap in Friendship Games and while it was satisfying to see Sci Twi get chewed out, it was only a small bit.}
4252651
I don't think being an alicorn is something one can achieve by working towards it which is something Sunset failed to understand (I'm not trying to defend how smart she may or may not be in this case). The comic shows her doing almost nothing BUT studying and working to try and reach alicornhood. If anything Sunset got punished for doing too much too quickly, which was Celestia's general stance of 'you aren't ready yet'.
Meanwhile Celestia ignores and refuses to discuss the mirror, still without giving a reason why, even though she knows it's tearing at Sunset (Maybe she just thought Sunset would give up). Also keep in mind that to Sunset, Celestia had all but promised Alicornhood by showing her the mirror and that being an Alicorn had more or less become Sunset's obsession at that point.
However after months of working as per Celestia's instructions Sunset found that she was getting no closer to that goal than before and thus started to try and find a way to that goal by herself (if anything I'd say that Celestia's way of teaching encourages one to find their own solutions). Upon doing so Sunset finds that Celestia could have made her into an alicorn if she had wanted to but didn't. This in combination to the fact that Celestia refused to discuss Sunset's vision in the mirror and the slowing pace at how she was being taught after the mirror incident, led Sunset to think that Celestia didn't want Sunset to become an Alicorn. Thus Sunset saw that Celestia was trying to keep her from her destiny, Sunset never saw what she was doing wrong because she was never told what was required of her to BE a princess or even to be on the road of becoming one. Hence to her, alicornification was something that someone gave to you. Sunset never knew if or how it was earnable, only that Celestia could do it. I think Sunset demanding from Celestia to be made into an alicorn was some sort of last ditch effort to get what she thought Celestia had promised her. Celestia then proceeded to, completely reasonably, dismiss Sunset as her student.
I may just be immature about this, but I think that given the context that Sunset had, getting as mad as she did was a reasonable reaction when she felt that Celestia had betrayed and abandoned her. After Twilight became a princess too? While Sunset still had no context as to how one became an Alicorn? She would be seething, she'd have thought that Celestia just handed Twilight alicornhood while she refused to do the same for Sunset.
Heck, Sunset's entire plan in the first movie could have just been some attempt to get back at Celestia in whatever way she could, invented when she learnt Twilight was a princess. She might not have cared if she would suceed or not only that she would cause as much damage as she could. I think EG1 Sunset had that kind of spitefulness in her.
P.S. I realise that most of this is based on speculation but I'd like to think that it's at least reasonable and I find it works better than Sunset threw a tantrum. Which, I guess is still what it boils down to, but I think that it's understandable and not at all childish that she did so. Again remember that becoming an alicorn had basically become her life's goal.
Also it's kind of tough writing this all out via mobile.
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There's definitely blame on Celestia's part in all this, but she isn't the one that lost her temper and did something rash.
In Sunset's mind, maybe, but Celestia didn't say anything of the sort. She showed her the mirror in the hopes that it would show her something that, from Celestia's reaction, it didn't.
What makes you say 'months'? It looked to me like a few days, and for all we know, wasn't longer than the course of an afternoon.
It does, except when she explicitly tells them not to pursue something. Granted, she really should have given Sunset a good reason to let it go for the time being.
So we're in agreement that being destined for alicornhood was all in Sunset's head? A little kid feeling entitled to something their parents aren't giving them probably won't think they're doing anything wrong either.
Shouting demands and accusations rather than asking for reasons (which Sunset never actually did, just kept pestering Celestia to tell her about the mirror) is a reasonable reaction? We can see where she's coming from, sure, but her actions still boil down to 'Give me what I want RIGHT NOW!!'
I like to think seeing what Twilight achieved only made it worse for her, explaining her EQG1 failures as having been so mad that she could barely think straight, leading to...
Something like this, actually!
But again, it's something we'd just have to assume, not something the viewer is actually shown.
A tantrum is still a tantrum, no matter the reasoning, not unlike Cinch's reaction when it looked like Crystal Prep wouldn't be claiming the clear win in the Friendship Games. Cinch kept a cooler head, but her insistence that her side wins (no matter her reasoning) still came off as pretty childish, same as Sunset's breakdown when she couldn't get her way, both with Celestia and when Twilight wouldn't give her the crown no matter what.
If you'd like proof that adults can throw tantrums too, just look up "Digital Homicide."
We solute you, soldier!
4252765 Oh man, digital homicide
That was a bag of worms if there ever was one. The whole situation with them was a bit surreal really.
They were more out of it than Sunset!
That would imply she ''lost'' her friend by him dying or something, he just went off to school far away and she responded by mind controlling a town worth of ponies. Sunset had her pride overwhelm her common sense (what little she seems to have) and made a large mistake thats impossible to take back. She may not be particularly intelligent, but she is a nice open slate and had a more legit dumb reason. Extensive pride fueling self-destructive arguments is something i can definitely relate to. Given that my first friend moved away to another school when i was too young to keep in contact and i did NOT go insane, glimmer just looks unhinged.
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Every bit of lazy writing in the first movie that benefited the protagonists. Heck, identical double of five of the Mane 6 attend the same school so Twilight can use her previous knowledge of their personalities to near insta-befriend them, but of course double Twilight goes to a different school so Princess Twilight isn't seen as trying to steal someone's identity?
Yes, and in the two seconds that it took her to recover, Fluttershy happened to be in the exact place to find the crown, retrieve it, and run off to Luna before Sunset could stop her. Lazy writing.
Lazy writing plagues everyone on both sides. Part of it is for the same reason Chrysalis sang a song explaining her plans in the Royal Wedding: To make the show understandable to kids by keeping the adults from having too complex tactics. It's also why we don't see Sunset simply have Snips and Snails beat Twilight Sparkle unconscious in the night while she is sleeping in the library and lock her up somewhere: You could never show that in a kids movie. In a setting where everyone has to behave in a manner that is understandable by (and not traumatizing towards) 8 year olds, I am not surprised we aren't shown Sunset driving anyone to suicide through social media or other complex manipulation tactics. I'm looking at the scoreboard, however, and it says Sunset won this contest 5 or 6 times over in the past, including against Rarity, who seems fairly smart and socially adept. Informed traits are not as good as observed traits, but you have to make some allowances for the medium.
No, I just mean anyone who is deaf and/or anyone who observes people acting out of character for a significant period of time before they hear the sirens singing themselves, would look for a rifle and deal with the sirens. Again, not going to show that in a kids show, its why the 8 Rainbooms didn't actually go and beat up the Sirens and yank off their necklaces after Sunset figured out the source of their power.
If she didn't know about the crown ahead of time and came up with the plan on the spot, that's even more impressive. And yes, sneaking around all those guards there (for the special princess summit) takes not just quietness, but tactical intelligence. Twilight's extremely smart, and even she couldn't pull off burgling the Royal Library she visits all the time without being spotted.
Muscle memory after you've been in a completely different form for multiple years is only going to get you so far, I can't imagine anyone who regained their ability to walk after being in a wheel chair for two years being able to sneak around a castle and then escape pursuit, unless they were extremely clever. And teleporting? We've seen a total of 2 unicorns in existence that could cast the teleport spell, both of them incredibly intelligent, and half the time even Twilight couldn't pull off teleporting under stress. Teleportation seems to be the acme of magical spells that only incredibly smart unicorn wizards can do.
You're kidding me here, right? Euclidean Geometry at the Proofs level isn't even taught in high school these days, kids take electives to learn about it so they can compete in mathletes competitions. This blog by a former mathlete who recognized the radical axes as something that led her to victory in the Bay Area Olympiad is where I learned more about the problem, and it goes on to explain how Sunset made an error towards the end but still had an incredibly impressive showing based on what was on her chalkboard. So even though Sunset got the wrong answer in the end, the fact that she was able to get as far as she did shows she has significant intelligence. I'm going to trust the champion mathlete when she says that Sunset Shimmer's math skills are incredibly impressive, and again remember that she probably had to relearn a ton of math two years ago.
We see whoever fails a competition in the academic portion gets eliminated, up until Sunset Shimmer, who makes it in. So either the math event was some kind of special tie-breaker that was so hard that failing it doesn't eliminate you, or they give out points in various other areas and Sunset was impressive enough to gain enough points despite a failure while no one else accomplished such a feat.
As I shown, she seems a pretty sharp cookie in canon, despite being held back by a PG rating while evil, and we can infer with reasonable likelihood the deeds she did off-screen require her to be extremely intelligent.
A normal teenager grew up with the technology, Sunset is the equivalent of an amish kid who moved to the big city freshman year. And remember she pulled off all those tricks years ago, almost as soon as she arrived on the planet. And yeah, those are silly Hollywood machines, because they're not going to show a full cat-scan, but the fact that Sunset knows how to operate them (And she is shown using them competently until the magic makes them go haywire) without prior need shows an impressive ability to adapt to new technologies on the fly.
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This worked to redeem Sunset, which is what allowed her the series of perfect happy endings from there. Only when it was time for Sunset to change did things start working out for other people.
See above.
You mean like the sirens craftily getting to Luna and Celestia first, which was shown to the audience in an easily understandable manner? Or manipulating Trixie into disposing of the Rainbooms for them? Or exploiting every opening they were given to further their plans? All were shown to the audience in a perfectly understandable way, and all worked until (through lazy writing) it was all undone at the last second.
I don't know if little kids will catch everything, but honestly, little kids probably won't know or care about the specific details of the plot.
Sunset didn't do the plain, obvious thing (steal the crown through brute force) until her schemes had repeatedly failed and she lost her temper, because her pride (her certainty that she was so much better than Twilight that she was sure to win) had her acting like an idiot for the entire movie.
Again, your assumptions barely make a lick of sense here.
1. Human beings behave on a wide spectrum of ways, not a set 'character' all the time. Sometimes we're happy, sometimes we're sad, sometimes we're having some kind of trouble that makes us behave a little differently from normal. 'Out of character' is not a billboard that something must be altering someone's mind.
2. In a world in which there is no prior understanding of magic, no one would reasonably piece together that someone acting differently from usual simply must mean magical mind-control.
3. If, in your example, they hear the sirens singing themselves, wouldn't they be under their spell too? As is how it works for everyone that doesn't have magical (unexplained) immunity?
4. I'm not sure getting a gun would be as easy as you make it sound.
5. The sirens were shown to be subtle and careful in their day-to-day routine, singing their songs while out of immediate sight and dressed inconspicuously. I get the feeling you didn't catch that in the same way an 8-year-old might not have, but it was shown to the audience.
6. I don't know if Sunset did figure out the source of their power, just that their singing was what got everyone at each others' throats.
7. If you'll recall, Twilight specifically outlined that the counterspell would be best used when all of the sirens' victims were present so as to snap them out of the spell, which was why they opted to participate in the Battle of the Bands in the first place. As no one knew the gems would break from this, even if anyone knew the gems were the source (which I don't think they did), the fear was that even if they disabled the sirens somehow, their victims would still be bewitched.
Again, you seem to think that when Sunset does something wrong, it's lazy writing, but when we're given no exposition whatsoever on how she comes up with information she had no way of understandably knowing (you know, lazy writing), it must mean she's a genius. A lot of your points sound like attempts to justify a conclusion (Sunset being smart) rather than find one through analysis of the given data.
Twilight and Rainbow Dash have both managed to sneak around somewhere and wind up getting caught too. If Sunset had 'tactical intelligence' beyond not walking around when a guard was looking her way, I think she'd have come up with better plans, especially when given more time than she'd have when creeping around at night.
Your example depends on the muscles in question being atrophied or damaged in some way, and if we're talking magical transformation that completely shifts the body, we don't know how much of the adaptation is done for them. Twilight figured it out in a few minutes, and we don't know how long Sunset was back in Equestria before starting her plan.
That, and her 'extremely clever' escape boiled down to 'run away, teleport, run away.'
3 unicorns, one of them being Starlight Glimmer. When was it shown that Twilight couldn't teleport at a given time, not that she just didn't, for whatever reason? (my first guess is being scatter-brained, as at least that way she wouldn't mess up tense moments by defusing them instantly)
Futhermore, practicing magic is a skill, and while teleporting has only been done by powerful figures, there is nothing to suggest to the audience that it's a matter of intelligence, not sheer power and practice. Maybe some amount of brainpower really is needed for powerful magic, but so far, it's something you'd just have to assume based on RPG convention.
I looked it up, and if we ignore that both of them skipped steps "â–³DFG and AGBâ–³AGB are equilateral... They also skipped justifying FC = FA" and the writers most likely just copy-pasted a complex-looking math problem, I'll grant that she may be reasonably good at math (not enough to not fail anyway, but still), even if it was delivered in a way not only 8-year-olds, but most adults weren't going to catch (which I thought you said the writers couldn't do given the medium?).
That's certainly something (as long as we ignore certain details), but I again have to draw attention to how Fluttershy is evidently good with spelling and chemistry. Is it a sign of genius, or are they just good with particular subjects? I'd like to lean toward the former in Sunset's case, if only because it's what she's supposed to have shown all along, but I'm afraid this alone isn't convincing.
You say this based on having jumped worlds, I would guess? What makes you think the math would be different if the languages are the same? Or that she'd have forgotten however much she learned under Celestia?
Cadence didn't say anything about failing (like everyone who did poorly in the spelling bee, all of whom we saw in the next round), just about members winning enough points to proceed. As I said before, either the event is (conveniently for Sunset) misnamed or we have to assume she did really well somewhere else, despite not seeing any evidence of it.
No, you didn't, and no, she really doesn't, as the only thing she has to show for it in canon is a botched math problem. The rest is you making assumptions that automatically lean toward her being smart and handwaving everything else as lazy writing.
Again, you seem to be assuming she just instantly mastered cell-phones and social media despite the viewer having no data on exactly how long it took her to break everyone up. If there are two events (Fall Formal and Spring Fling) a year, we see three pictures of Sunset with the crown, the portal opens every 30 moons (which, unless the rules are wildly different in Equestria in regard to cycles of the moon, 30 moons = 30 months = 2.5 years), then Sunset has only won three out of five possible contests, leaving a noteworthy gap between her arrival and dominating the school. Note that she's even smiling and looking nice in the first one, so it may not have been until after her first year that she actually started her reign.
Even if we assume (which, if you've been paying attention, we can't) that Sunset knew exactly what she was doing with the equipment in her mad science lab, we don't know how long she spent setting all of that up, getting it to work, etc. For all the viewer knows, she started shortly after Rainbow Rocks (anywhere from weeks to months beforehand), and had only recently gotten a decent handle on it, but again, you say 'on the fly' as though she definitely picked it up just that morning. Even then, as I said, she learned nothing from it, so all we see is another failure, because wearing a coat and fiddling with tech (which, for all we know, she was just going through the motions with) does not signify intelligence. Maybe it was supposed to from an out-of-universe perspective, but that just supports my point here: Sunset's brilliance is an informed trait.
>What I found instead suggests that at best, she's a fairly average person with unbelievable, reality-warping levels of luck, which sometimes has no other purpose than to make her look cool.
Dude. That pretty literally may be said about *any* character in the show (and movies). Even Twilight has plenty of idiot moments. The show should be viewed through lens of genre laws with suspension of disbelief. So what we actually should look for is not the actual actions, but stated status and work from there.
Though this is completely unrelated to why I like Sunset stories, as long as they don't include idiot redemption angst. Sunset is a good bad girl, and boys like bad girls (and I'm still a boy at heart, for better or worse, even if grumpy and cynical). The movies take it away from her, so they suck. Consequently, I primarly look for heavy AU fics.
The first competition was an elimination. If you don't score enough points, you're out. Reaching the spelling bee was enough to go on. On top of that, the ultimate winner scores for their respective team.
Sunset only lost to Twilight in the end with a rather difficult math problem. So yeah, that's kinda impressive.
The shorts also show her trying to figure out how magic works in the human world. You know, through scientific methods. She couldn't. Neither could Twilight, for that matter, she built a magic-sucking Doom Machine with no idea what it actually did.
Starlight, first and foremost, is lazy. She's too lazy to make a real effort at connecting with ponies who aren't basically like her, she uses her overpowered magic to solve problems for her—magic we hardly ever see her study, by the way. We saw Twilight make an effort, practice, try to better herself. Starlight just pulls it right out of her behind.
Sunset tries to help others without imposing herself on them. In fact, as was pointed out, one of her failings is backing away too quickly because she's so afraid of what she used to be. But she's still there for them, she still identifies their problems and tries to help them with those. I think you make the mistake of ignoring this part of her. This also takes smarts, arguable more so than Starlight delegating her band of misfits to do their individual things.
Between the two of them, I think Sunset is actually smarter. If anypony just gets things handed to her, it's Starlight.
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Addressed above and in other comments.
You may have a point here, at least in regard to Starlight being so ridiculously powerful that she can magic through pretty much anything as long as that's an option. Twilight was the same way in season 1, as I recall, and as recently as with the vampire fruitbats.
That said, I'm not entirely sure Starlight is lazy so much as hesitant to try things she's not confident about. She didn't put off seeing Sunburst or doing Twilight's friendship problem list out of laziness, but fear that she'd mess things up. I'm not sure a lazy person would organize their own functioning (if slightly nightmarish) town or dedicate eternity to a battle for revenge, either.
Very arguable. In fact, one might even say Sunset was being lazy by sitting back and leaving people to their own devices until she decides it's absolutely necessary. I wouldn't, just so we're clear, but it's as feasible an interpretation as it is with Starlight.
Starlight wasn't imposing either when she tried to reach out to Chrysalis, but Sunset didn't so much as make an attempt with anyone but Twilight, nor express the faintest wish to do so at any point. It does take some sense to determine whether or not it's a good time to step in, but as she typically waits until someone is about to get hurt or already is (friends screaming at each other, Pinkie throwing nails despite recently having gained powers that sometimes make things she throws explode), I'm not sure she's that smart with it, and even if she were, I don't know that it signifies that she's more than just sensible, not a genius.
Still, she does come through in those things before it's too late, if only because she's given a very clear "things be f
cked if you don't say anything now" sign most of the time. Talking to Flash about Twilight, though, perfect score on that one! 
Starlight, however, made active decisions on how best to utilize those with her under considerable, constant pressure, though Trixie did her thing on her own. I don't know if it was brilliant of Starlight, but it's more than Sunset ever accomplished without super-powered magic or a convenient twist of fate, usually from nowhere.
Better, I said Starlight was better, as in more effective, not smarter. Better at the Hero of Friendship shtick, because bar being absurdly powerful out of nowhere (something Sunset is equally guilty of), I think her method was more effective than "Oh, I'd love to share the Magic of Friendship with you, but I'd just hate to impose" in regard to her fallen enemies.
When the sirens ran off, she expressed nothing but satisfaction. When everyone was ganging up on Cinch? Same. She didn't say a word to Gloriosa or the Shadowbolts, but I can't blame her for thinking they pretty much had it together after what happened in both cases.
Starlight, however, extended a very sincere, very reasonable olive branch right away, even if it didn't take.
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In that case, it's one for one. Sunset offered her hand to Twilight during her magic-induced rampage of madness, Starlight offered her hoof to Chrysalis after she got totally beaten.
Aside from that, Sunset has been shown to care about the people around her and trying to help them work through their problems, while Starlight doesn't seem to want to make the effort of understanding anypony who isn't like her. Not talking much? Can't have that! Wants to tell you about their family anecdotes? Yawn, boring. Super-important dinner coming up, where your teacher really really wants to prove herself to her own teacher in turn? Eh, screw that.
And she never seems truly sorry for any of it. In that sense, the mind-control thing was a first.
I don't agree that Starlight is a better hero of friendship than Sunset, because Starlight is a pretty lousy friend and barely seems to want to change that. She might be a better organiser, but hero of friendship? Maybe in a "If I did it, so can you" way, but Sunset also has a claim to that. So, I'm afraid I disagree on this.
But I'm not truly surprised about it. Between you and me?
I'm starting to get bored by Discord. Just a little bit, a little little bit, but it's happening. Specifically when he only cared about Fluttershy and nopony else. That was... really disappointing.
Maybe we have a slightly different outlook on these characters. That's what it sounds like to me so far.
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Starlight has had one opportunity (unless Trixie counts? I don't really think it does, but she was there when Trixie needed her, I guess), and took it. Sunset had three, maybe four, and only took the one that happened to look like someone she already knew and cared about. Not quite one for one.
I think you've got a point here; Starlight is a better hero, but a worse friend so far. Granted, Sunset had a bit of a head-start (Pri-Twi showed up at the end of FG, which is when Starlight was reformed, so however much time (not given, as far as I know) passed between then and LoE, presumably, is how long Starlight has been taking Friendship lessons as opposed to Sunset's better part of a year), but I don't see Starlight outdoing her there any time soon.
I could have sworn he was getting along with Twilight's friends in general, but maybe that was exclusively at her expense. Maybe he'll find a friend in Trixie (or more
) in later episodes?
Personally I've always just kind of assumed that Sunset is meant to be brilliant, but can't be because in the first movie she inherently has to fail, and in every subsequent movie she seems to be relegated to the role of "say what we want the audience to hear for clarification purposes." So yeah not brilliant on camera by any measure, but if it weren't for bad writing she would be a genius.
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You could say this about most of characters in EG.
Now that I've had a few days to think about this (and saw the analyst bronies react to season 5 finale and 6 premier), I really don't see how this is any different from Twilight. First, we didn't get any "proof" that Twilight is smart until the season 3 premier. In fact, she's been shown to be beyond dense, rather dumb, and only skilled in magic (which she was basically born to be good at). It isn't until the song where she shows any real non-magic based knowledge that isn't a fairy tale, and until she's alone with Spike that she's seen actually thinking on her feet. We're working off being good at magic =/= smart, as otherwise Sunset being able to teleport would be enough proof. Many of the major actions Twilight took during the first two seasons were actually in universe the dumbest possible action and just so happened to work out. Celestia tells her not to worry about a fairy tale and make friends? She completely ignores it, happens to be right even though the thousand plus year ruler tells her to ignore it, and she still somehow makes friends out of the situation? Gets two gala tickets? Doesn't consider Spike (if they're plus one tickets, he might want to bring a friend) or even think of asking for more. I could keep listing them, but I'll skip to a few of the more blatant ones, otherwise we'd be here all day. She doesn't recognize Philomena as a phoenix (even though she's Celestia's pet) or even think about asking Celestia indirectly about her. In a Canterlot Wedding, she acts like a complete child, and just so happens to be right (even though Celestia didn't notice anything wrong with either fake Cadence or Shining Armor, both of whom she should know well) when all she had to do was talk to Celestia in private or stop beating around the bush and just have a serious talk with her friends.
It doesn't help that the universe literally revolves around Twilight. Seriously, what the hell was that season 5 finale? If Twilight didn't through shear luck get startled due to the magic destiny rainboom, the world would either go to complete shit or end. She didn't actually do anything become Celestia's student, just had a random explosion of power, which we have to presume she was born with because she showed no signs of it before (everyone else was just given direction by the rainboom). That's without mentioning the Tree of Harmony having her and her friends marks or the magic box of friendship destiny and the friendship problem map, or the Starswirl spell that needed the Elements to function that Twilight accidentally cast and nearly ruined her friends' lives, which she bullshit her way out of and became an alicorn. Take it to the next step, and it could be argued that the Equestria Girls movies revolve around Twilight. The first movie had just as many bullshit moments for her as Sunset and helped her accept her new role as princess. The second revolved equally around Sunset's issues and Twilight's. They both came out better in the end (as does every main character after each episode). All of Sunset's growth led her into being able to save human Twilight, who already had her friends prepped by princess Twilight, so she literally got a free set of friends and ended up much better off at the end of the third movie through no work of her own (at least Sunset had to go through an undisclosed amount of time as an outcast that everyone hated, and her own friends barely trusted). Fourth movie, she got the strongest power, an alicorn form, and was treated as the hero for basically facing her fear of magic (which the other five had as well), which she didn't do on her own, but entirely through Sunset's help (the other five each said a line to her, though their entire contribution to the final battle literally amounted to Rarity's shield stalling long enough for the pep talk). Basically, the human universe favors the Twilights at least as much as Sunset.
People treat Sunset as though she's smart because it's implied in movie tropes that she is. The math face off sets shows her as a near equal to Twilight through imagery, competing neck and neck with her (and again, the math problem itself could be used as an argument, though that's beating a dead horse at this point). The Science of Magic short implies that she knows what she's doing with the technology, the readings, and the data. It was the equivalent of technobabble. Plus, I could argue that she was using her own laptop, so she had to at least have some knowledge of software, and was able to get human tech to react and get results from magic, but again, beating a dead horse. While you technically can't for a fact say she's smart from these, it's all movie speak for being smart, and doing in depth analysis isn't really possible due to not having enough information on their world or any backstory whatsoever. It also doesn't help that one of the chapter books (which probably aren't canon), flat out states that she's a genius and ahead of all of her friends, and this fandom loves to incorporate parts of the comics they like (especially Cadence's, Shining Armor's, and Sunset's backstories), which aren't canon, so I can see the same happening here.
Basically, the same arguments can be used against season one and two's Twilight being smart, or that Twilight and her friends really accomplish anything beyond reality warping levels of luck (quite literally in the case of the rainboom and the Tree of Harmony) when it's not a slice of life episode, in which case at least half the issues are caused by characters being dense and dumb. Even after Twilight was finally shown to be smart in the season 3 premier, there were still a lot of episodes that revolved around her being dumb.
Each of the Equestria Girls movies has a crucial weakness that impacts the perception of the characters. In the first, well it had a lot more than just one, though I don't think I need to go into that (the fanbase has torn it apart so thoroughly, I doubt I need to say anything). The second movie flanderized the five friends and wouldn't allow Twilight to talk about her problems, which is what led to Sunset's victory feeling a bit cheap plot wise (it could've been either Twilight not trusting Sunset until the end, or just her telling Sunset and Sunset feeling it's not her place to share it with the others, or something). The third movie had the actual friendship games, which were beyond horribly designed. The academic event was a 12 v 12 elimination event that involved dropping off people who failed in early parts, that involved woodshop and cooking before the finale, which was English and math. Basically, the academic event, which was the first event, saved the academic subjects for last and eliminated others based on miscellaneous subjects (that not even all schools offer or can even be fit on an honors student's schedule most of the time). Not to mention that following the academic event is that shear wtf relay. Seriously, not only do have to be able to pass arbitrary subjects to compete (the final round that had math and English seemed to only decide the victor of the event), you also have to have at least two people who can shoot a bow and arrow at a moving target, and two that can ride dirtbikes. Not only is the physical portion after the academic, it also involves surprise events that almost no students should be able to complete (and was set up before the victors of the academic round were decided), the ones most likely to be able to were eliminated (the academic round already required uncommon skills), and complete shuts out any disabled or unathletic student. Not to mention that after the random extreme sports, it ends with a find the hidden flag event. Also, forget Sunset, how the hell did Rainbow Dash and Pinkie make it to the second round? The fourth movie had tons of exposition dialogue and had the five friends forget that the last time they ignored magic, it almost killed them. The movies put almost their entire focus on Sunset and Twilight's character arcs, and the other parts of the movies suffer for that.
What Sunset has after the first movie (another thing the fanbase is very good at is either tuning out parts of the show they don't like, or twisting it into something they do for the sake of fanon) is that she's one of the few genuinely (consistently) good people, always willing to put her friends issues and desires before her own. She'll step in once things get dangerous. She talked her friends out of their funks in Rainbow Rocks (Twilight just magicked them in the season two premier) and talked down and helped redeem human Twilight instead of using a purify beam (which took princess Twilight until the season 5 finale, in a situation in which she couldn't actually beat her opponent). After they defeated a completely insane Gloriosa (they already established she was magic overloaded to the point where it wasn't her at all in control), they immediately forgive her and make a fundraiser to save the camp. The Sirens still tried fighting after their defeats and ran off before anyone could get to them, while Cinch not only showed no remorse for what she did to Twilight, she also tried running away when Twilight was ripping apart dimensions and even after that, she still tried to turn the situation in her favor by trying to extort a forfeit, after almost dooming the world (at least Chrysalis was trying to feed her subjects). She's implied to be smart (in movie imagery and the Science of Magic, plus implications of her survival in the human world and backstory), and since she's got all that, the fanbase (and Sunset Shimmer's Time to Shine) just assume she's smart.
Lastly, she's the only redemption handled with any sort of decent execution. Trixie and Luna's are so filled with retcons that is you watch their episodes one after another, they will seem like completely different characters. Discord's actual redemption was him being blackmailed more or less by Fluttershy and then completely inconsistent after that. In some cases he's shown to be an expert manipulator, guiding the others into being better friends, while in others he's completely oblivious to the obvious on levels that would make EQG1 characters embarrassed. It's to the point where it's impossible to know if Discord faked his betrayal in the season four finale (as he know about the keys), if Celestia planned for it (with or without Discord's knowledge/consent), or if it was genuine. As for Starlight, she got off completely scot-free after nearly destroying Equestria for her revenge against a pony who she assualted, temporarily crippled, and attempted to brainwash to serve her own goals stopped her. She didn't actually show any remorse for her actions in either case, instead worrying about how they'll make her look to others. Everyone instantly forgives her, she gets one of the most powerful characters just because, has the same backstory as Applebloom (except with a big plot hole, why not write to Sunburst or got to Celestia's school herself?), and gets away with being selfish and always putting her needs before everyone else (arguably even in the season 6 finale). While Sunset's turn in the first movie seemed quick, the actual transition is unknown, she shows genuine remorse for her actions, isn't instantly forgiven (even her friends don't completely trust her), has to go through an arc to regain her confidence, and isn't full of retcons. That's my stance on the character at least.
Edit: At this point, I almost want to create a discussion (either voice through Discord/Curse/Teamspeak or a Google hangout/shared doc).
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We've been over this before. Whether or not Twilight's intelligence is an informed trait too doesn't make Sunset any smarter.
In other words, her brains are, again, an informed trait, not one she is actually shown to have.
See above.
None of this is a point in favor of Sunset being smart or skilled. If the Rainbooms are collectively less skilled than they appeared at first glance, it still doesn't make Sunset any smarter.
Moral fiber =/= brilliance or talent. I don't know if it's coming across, but I never said Sunset has no merits whatsoever, just that she's not especially bright and owes most all her wins to sappy speeches anyone else could have given or magic doing the work for her.
So, again, we're in agreement that she's not actually shown to be intelligent, it's just an informed trait?
If a character acting really differently between appearances set months apart is a negative point, then I think Sunset wins the gold medal for lousy redemptions in your book. That's not even accounting for how we didn't get more than a few lines out of Luna or Trixie after they were stopped, and those brief, emotionally-raw periods in which we see them aren't the best time to get a feel for their normal behavior. Keep in mind that Trixie acted more like we'd come to expect just seconds after apologizing to Twilight about the alicorn amulet. In their appearances from then on, they seem pretty consistent to me, and even if we didn't know Luna before, Trixie seems a lot more like her old self than Sunset ever did. To the point that I don't know if I'd say that Trixie is 'redeemed' at all, because apart from being a boastful fraud, she wasn't really evil until her life was ruined, and seems to have more or less returned to the pony we first saw.
I was annoyed about Discord's sudden stupidity (give or take, he was fairly crafty the time he deliberately kept Twilight out of the loop for giggles) after he first grew to care for someone other than himself, but honestly, it's Discord, spirit of chaos and disharmony. If he were consistent and predictable, I'd be even more confused. I still like his redemption better because again, he acts like his old self, just not out purely for himself anymore.
"I am so sorry, and I'll accept any punishment you deem appropriate."
Yea, no remorse there, right? I guess apologizing to her village didn't mean anything either.
Starlight's reaction to her situation was not that of a sane, rational person, but the difference between her and Sunset is that Starlight was a kid, and kids are known to do some pretty dumb things, especially when they're hurt. She apparently withdrew herself from others for fear of the same thing happening again, spent some years thinking about it, and developed her mad 'equal' philosophy in the hope that she'd never have to go through that again. Crazy, but I still liked her story more than the supposedly smart, sensible, possibly adult mare throwing a tantrum because she wasn't getting what she wanted fast enough.
I think the transition was around 5 months, and yes, she is instantly forgiven, just not at the same time. CHS in general (people she tormented for years) is wary of her at the start of Rainbow Rocks, not caring about her change or her efforts at making amends, but then she helps stop the sirens and everyone is fine with her, not because they got to know her or understood her to be sincere in her change, but because she saved them from a bigger threat. Suddenly, none of her past transgressions matter, but I didn't get the impression that they forgave her because she changed, but because she was a hero now.
To her credit, she at least tried to do things right, but nobody cared until she had her magical, fix-everything hero moment.
Also annoying to me is that she completely lost her old character, becoming someone entirely different. I understand why, certainly, months of everyone looking at you like the other students did in that first gym scene would take a toll on someone's psyche, but even when she gets her confidence back, she's barely anything like what she was before. Granted, this might be because before, she was a shallow caricature of an insanely egotistical person, but she does vaguely keep her short temper, at least. Sometimes.
That said, you do understand that no matter what anyone says/thinks about how the redemptions were handled, Sunset still isn't any smarter or more skillful than your average person, right?
I'm typing this through my phone so I'll have to keep it short. First, Sunset's redemption at the end of the second movie wasn't just save the day, she did it inspite of the school hating her and through proving she learned and understood friendship. Next, the problem with Trixie's redemption is not her but literally everything else around her. In her first episode, the main characters attempt to humiliate her during her show and try to pressure Twilight into doing the same, but two idiots bring in an Ursa and Trixie takes the blame, which ruins her career? Besides news of Twilight's deeds never leave Ponyville (including being a princess), Trixie's life gets ruined through basically almost no fault of her own (Twilight's friends were just as bad, if not worse that episode). Next episode she has a revenge quest against the one person who did nothing to her, then seems to reconcile with Twilight at the end, only for it to be undone for the sake of Starlight. Also, what was up with the alicorn amulet? Trixie's redemption made no sense because nothing around her made any. Luna's first appearance had her speak modern English and he exposed to all of Ponyville. Her next appearance (never mind lack of appearances in the Gala or during Discord's return) has her forget modern English and forget how to talk to others personally. Plus, it has oblivious Pinkie and scared to the point of hurting others Fluttershy. Basically, it completely redid Luna and all of Twilight's friends knowledge and interactions with her. Then, after being dream therapist for a few episodes, Tantabus happens, which didn't fit any of the Luna's we've seen. Discord suffers from Spike and Pinkie syndrome, where every writer has a different interpretation of him (not different aspects of the same character, but a completely different one). Lastly, every time Starlight apologizes or her surrender, it never felt genuine (at least to me), instead that she admits defeat and is trying to cover her own ass (and Twilight instantly trusts her, but not Sunset in the second movie).
As to why I keep bringing up her implied abilities?
What I don't get is how is Sunset different from any other character in this show that has had more than one appearance? The only real differences between Sunset and the others is that she's had the equivalent of only one writer interpret her and had no slice of life character episodes. If M.A. Larson was in charge of Friendship games, Sunset and Twilight would've probably had much more intense battles and it would've probably ended with alicorn Sunset, with Sunset being spunkier and sarcastic. None of the other characters have a justified fanon personality, as they are either mostly headcanon (like Celestia and Luna) or are completely different characters based on episode (like Spike, Pinkie, Fluttershy, Twilight, and Discord). For me (and seemingly most others here), between the friendship games (whether it was the actual math, her making it to the very end against Twilight, or the imagery), her being Celestia's student, the Science of Magic, and Sunset Shimmer's Time to Shine (which is as canon as the comics most likely, but people still keep Shining and Cadence's backstories) are more than enough to justify her being a genius in fanon and present enough of a case for her being at least smart (though maybe lacking common sense, like Twilight) in canon. The only reason it's easier to justify fanon for say the mane six is that they've had so many different interpretations in canon (which we know gets retconed on demand by Hasbro) that you can justify almost everything (not much of a stretch to argue that Cupcakes would be in character for Pinkie). Characterization seems to have improved in the last two seasons, but the damage has already been done. Literally every character in the show that has had more than an episode can be torn apart on at least the same level as you did Sunset here. As to why people prefer Sunset to Starlight (at least from all the blogs I've read and videos I've seen)? Sunset actually suffered for her redemption. She wasn't instantly forgiven by anyone on screen (her friends still don't really trust her by Rainbow Rocks, neither does Twilight) and the school hates her. She goes through a character arc, genuinely feels bad for her past actions (for longer than just the forgiveness scene) and whenever she snaps at someone. Starlight jumps into mind control when things don't go her way and is instantly forgiven, and Sunset's lack of backstory is preferable to a retread of Applebloom plus free pass into being the most powerful unicorn (with an obsession with equality). I'd say Sunset has earned her fanon interpretation, and that it doesn't clash with canon.
4260845
You said Starlight was instantly forgiven and Sunset wasn't. This is partly true, and I submitted that Sunset was instantly forgiven later, and for dubious reasons. Are you saying that CHS only understood that Sunset had changed after she saved their useless hides again, despite months of effort in showing just that without flashy magic? Because that was kind of my point there.
If Sunset's redemption was the only one you liked, that's fine, but can you perhaps explain how that makes her smarter or undoes the way the universe conveniently bends to her advantage?
I don't suppose you can specifically explain why you think this and I should think her supposed lack of sincerity exists anywhere but in your head? It would be neat if we had a villain do that, go undercover as 'reformed' with every intention of springing a trap later, but do you have any actual evidence for this submission?
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough; her reputation as a 'brilliant badass' or otherwise intelligent action hero, the things people seem to attribute to her the most in spite of those things barely existing. I thought that was pretty clear given the context of my entire original post being based on precisely that.
Ask yourself this: When viewing just about every other character for the second time, did they have traits and behaviors that could easily be attributed to the character we saw the first time? Trixie, Starlight, Discord, Maud Pie, the Flim Flam brothers, Big Macintosh, Zecora, and many more act fairly in line with what we may remember from them the first time.
Sunset Shimmer? Seemed like a completely different person between appearance 1 and appearance 2, the only thing she more or less kept being the short temper. She has reasons for this, yes, but her shallow vanity routine is gone without a trace, and as that was pretty much her whole identity, I can at least understand why Sunset was so thoroughly rewritten.
Do you see where I'm coming from now?
Let me try to explain this one last time: Sunset Shimmer is thought to be a genius and generally amazing for the things she accomplishes, right?
I presented many points of evidence to show that she isn't very bright at all, and the fabric of time and space bend to her convenience.
These points have yet to be disproved.
While Sunset has her merits, skill and smarts are not included in that package, as we see from the aforementioned points of evidence, and to act as though she were the genius hero people generally seem to think she is would indeed clash with canon, because of these aforementioned points of evidence drawing a clear contrast between what people generally seem to think she is and what she actually is.
THAT IN MIND,
Your last paragraph there seems to suggest that since she's suffered and struggled (even if she ultimately got her way through dumb luck and deus ex machinas), she deserves to be thought of the reputation that I thought it was pretty clear I was talking about; the one where she's a brilliant, skillful hero who wins her conflicts with clever thinking and her own ability. Is that what you mean to say?
I have not said that there was nothing to like about her, and if you admire the way she pulled through her difficult times (even if the solution was usually just handed to her), that's fine, but it does not undo the aforementioned points of evidence. That is the point this blogpost was meant to make; that Sunset Shimmer being a super-smart action hero is pure fanon, and she has yet to do anything to earn that reputation, regardless of what else may be thought of her.
Whatever you choose to think of her, go nuts, all I'm asking is that if someone were to disagree with your interpretation, especially when they can easily poke tons of holes in it, you understand why.
4260871 Oh, I definitely get your points about why you have your stance on Sunset not being smart and just very lucky. What I don't get is how it's different from anything else in the show. The characters you listed, except Discord, had one or two character traits and that was it until seasons later, and the fanon still went wild with them (except Flim and Flam, seriously, they are way too underrepresented in fanfics from what I've seen). I was mainly trying to say what the fandom see's in the character and why she's interpreted that way, as I stopped taking the show seriously plot wise a long time ago. Between Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, Star VS the Forces of Evil, and many other shows have much better characterization and way better stories for the equivalents to the MLP season premiers and finales. MLP has proven itself a complete mess when it comes to characterization, as none of the reaccuring characters, except Zecora and Trixie (who instead breaks the world every time she shows up) feel like the same character in every episode. I don't mean showing a different part of their character, as the other shows I've listed do that much better (and have the same episodic character development with big story moments structure). Does the fanon overestimate Sunset's abilities? Of course, as it does with every character (Celestia (without Luna) and Twilight have never actually won a fight without the Elements or super Rainbow forms, Applejack has been repeatedly shown to be a bad judge of character and easy to lie to, Pinkie's Pinkie Sense never comes in at important times, Spike's and Twilight's abilities and perception are randomized every episode, and so on). At least Sunset has some of her fanon abilities implied in canon. That's more than really anyone but Zecora, Twilight (who's canon abilities are as consistent as a twenty sided dice), Starlight, and Discord can say. Every main character has the same reality warping levels of luck that Sunset has, so I don't really get what makes her different. I stick around the fanbase mainly for the fanfics and some of the Youtubers, as I feel the show is too all over the place for my tastes (especially with all of it's destiny crap, randomized characterization, and retcons that would make Kingdom Hearts and Metal Gear Solid blush). It feels like for every Lesson Zero, there's a Mysterious Mare Do Well and a mediocre episode. While I still enjoy the good episodes, and would still consider it a decent show, all of the problems you listed for Sunset apply to the rest of the show and fanon just as much. I don't get what makes Sunset different (especially since I've seen plenty of fics with her having average or unknown intelligence and varying physical abilities).
I'm really bad at typing out my points or getting my intent across through comments, so sorry about the jumbled mess (I'm much better with actual discussions), but basically what I've been trying to say is that I see relative to the rest of the show and fanon, I see more than enough justification for either your interpretation, or the super genius, or the action hero, or any other because one, the show itself has zero consistency, two, there's enough to imply that she's a genius or an oblivious idiot (or both, like Twilight), and three, we know next to nothing about her backstory, the human world, and what happened between the first two movies, so we fill in the blanks with our own experiences/assumptions. My point in these comments was to show why the fanon paints her the way it does, and not understanding what makes Sunset different from everyone else in the fanon. To be fair, I consider the show to be a mess and mainly just great material for fanfics and YouTube content (seriously, this fanbase compares to the Touhou and Mother fanbase in terms of dedication and is the closest I've seen to similar quality, except maybe Undertale), so I tend to judge everything in it rather harshly. Sunset is one of the few things I consider consistently good in the show (the others being Discord's comedy/trolling and the CMC), so I probably got a little overzealous in my tone in my comments, so sorry if it came out like that. My only problem with your interpretation as an interpretation (I do still disagree with parts, but they can go either way and is the point of interpretations, and to be honest, I don't really care much for the canon, I just love these kinds of discussions) is that it doesn't apply to just Sunset, and if it's an issue with everyone, then why single out Sunset?
4260916
Alright, that makes a bit more sense.
I singled out Sunset because she was the one I noticed actually kind of sucking when, time after time, I heard people gushing about how great she was. I don't know if your sentiment that nobody actually has an established character is true, because 'zero consistency' is plain nonsense. Characters have acted strangely plenty of times, but if you really think everyone has been completely different with every appearance, I'm not sure we're watching the same show. However, I'm not about to go documenting the actions of every single character like I did with Sunset.
From what I've observed, many other characters have won their own victories without qualifying statement. Fluttershy got through to Discord without force (her threat to retract her friendship wouldn't have meant anything if she hadn't touched his heart before that point) or convenient coincidence, Pinkie apparently averted a war with the yaks if I remember right (I guess she learned since the buffalo) and is apparently the main reason all of Ponyville don't go around scowling at each other, Twilight assessed the situation figured out what she needed to do to put the Ursa Minor back to sleep and save the town (even if she's been the one endangering it a few times) and riddled out how the Elements work in the pilot, even Spike has stepped up and accomplished things on his own merits now and then.
Sunset Shimmer? Sappy friendship speeches (her first being to those who literally sing and dance about the magic of friendship, at that, the same people she hung around for months to learn that stuff) anyone in the main cast could have (and probably has) delivered. That's pretty much it.