Rainbow Rocks did a lot to repair Shimmy for me... I mean I'm using a nickname for her that's adorable sounding and now say "Lady Bacon Hair" as a playful tease. She deserves better then to just sit unused amongst the plot devices and ideas I don't like.

I have a somewhat more serious universe for my tales. It's a somewhat darker version of the FiM world, nothing like FoE, or the world of Cupcakes. No this one stays true to the playful spirit, It's just written for adults. No Not like that! I mean it's more mature, complex story lines are allowed... Gods damn it! I took FiM and using stuff from g1 MLP made the setting more like the Forgotten Realms.

I have a story coming out in a few days (I only publish once its all done so I can go back and fix plot holes and sprinkle in foreshadowing.) and will ahve to think up a sequil. My main characters are my OC Meep ( a changeling who invented the identity of Twinkleshine), Lyra and Bon-Bon (because you just cannot have mint without a bonbon), Vinyl and Octavia, and Colgate (because Minuette is best pony and I like her nickname.). Do you think Sunset would be a good add to the mix? I was thinking about a tale with the six of them accidentally wandering though the portal (I have them as a gaming group of nerds) sometime after EG2. I may not go with that idea however. But if I do, should I add sunset in to their group as a main character?

Alternately, one thing I do with my universe is patch up the "Hasbro moments". For instance, why the hell did Queen Chrysalis, prompted by her people starving from lack of love, invade Canterlot to take an immaterial resource by force? Because she wasn't after food, she was on a crusade to destroy Celestia who is an affront to the changeling sungod whom they believe had the sun stolen from him by Clestia.

One other Hasbro moment is... Shimmy thinking she can invade canterlot and rule Equestria using an army of brainwashed highschoolers from Earth. Shimmer was Celestia's student, there is no way she is that much of a derp. In my setting there is a shadowy organization called The Tribunal. They are remnants of the pre-Celestia government and function as a shadow government, working to make sure their designs for Equestria are always met. They only want to make Equestria a utopic Superpower, but use assassination, repress information, use alternate histories, and other brutal methods to get their way. Sunset could have ran afoul of them and fled tot he human world instead. If she believed a crime family was after her then an army of thralls could be an appropriate force to gather.

Thoughts?

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I don't think her mean streak is ingrained, especially given how quick her turnaround was at the end of the film. The comic paints her ambition as her fatal flaw; if she'd just waited to reap the rewards of being Celestia's student, she would have the same status as Twilight has now.

A first movie fic, with the still villainous Sunset... and the only person she is soft and nice to, is Fluttershy. and before the whole showdown happens, Fluttershy finds a letter (note) from Sunset, apologizing in advance for what she may do the next few (time slot). During that time, Sunset is meaner to everyone, and ever starting to be mean and rough with Fluttershy... who dispirit her friends begging her leave her, refuses.

Thats an idea i've had for awhile, but have been to busy with another story (on another site) to writing it

Another one came to be, definitely wouldnt be one all would enjoy.
A Futa-Sunset... and a Feminine Gender Bent Aria.
So a Futa on a Trap.

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As the author of the Darth Vader comment, I don't think anyone will mind much if I butt in here. All of the following are best guesses, and there might be other explanations, but here's how I see things with Sunset:

Let me start by saying that I really don't see a particularly big difference between Verbose Mode's Sunset Shimmer and the one in Rainbow Rocks. But this means trouble for the bronies crushing on Sunset Shimmer as an angsty, athletic Fluttershy; sooner or later, they would find themselves in the position of someone who bought an adorable kitten, but now has a cat.

If the pictures in Principal Celestia's office are any indication, Rainbow Rocks isn't the first time that Sunset Shimmer has been in "Waifu Mode." She was as meek, hesitant, retiring, and awkward in her coronation photo from the first Fall Formal as she was in most of the second movie. (No doubt she was like that at first at the School for Gifted Unicorns too, inadvertently charming Princess Celestia and then graduating to bossing her around... although Princess Celestia kind of likes being bossed around.) But at the climax of Rainbow Rocks, Sunset finally threw aside her hesitance and let herself be her natural self again: fearless, brazen, motivated, extremely skilled, fiercely protective of her followers, perhaps just a tiny bit exhibitionistic, and just about as bossy as they come.

But while this is how she approaches the world, Sunset also has her limits and standards, and when she can't get something without violating those standards, she has the strength of will to walk away. (Contrast this with Rarity and Trixie, who are ambitious but weak-willed.) Back in the first movie, until she turned into a demon and tried to kill Twilight, Sunset sincerely believed that what she was doing was right; but when her attempt to claim the power that was rightfully hers ended in evil magic, mind control, attempted murder, and the same sort of end as the great malefactors whose histories were documented in the forbidden wing of the Canterlot archives, she didn't need any further prompting to realize that she had been profoundly wrong. When she says she's not going to try to conquer Equestria again, she can be trusted; and I fully expect Princess Celestia to call her back and crown her when the portal naturally opens again, and for Sunset to be profoundly surprised -- or expecting the worst -- when she receives that summons.

(I would also add that she's the kind of girl who instinctively loathes weakness, especially weakness combined with wickedness, and thinks nothing of running roughshod over those who don't stand up to her. The student body of CHS was timid, furtive, and venal, just begging for some tyrant to come along and rule over them with an iron fist; so of course she obliged. If the student body of CHS had an ounce of good character and moral fiber, it couldn't be terrorized with "mean looks, the Two Stooges, and weaponized text messages" (as PonyPon put it on derpibooru) -- and its response to the Anon-a-miss affair, if you're willing to think about that improbable comic, would have been to resolutely ignore the webpage, not to degenerate into an orgy of secret-leaking.

(Sunset's contempt for weakness has relatively little to do with Fluttershy, though. Sunset and Fluttershy have a lot of chemistry, and were very close in Rainbow Rocks; even in Equestria Girls, Fluttershy seemed as much awed by Sunset as she was afraid of her -- while if Sunset made a list of the things she most regretted doing, terrorizing Fluttershy would probably be high on that list.)

How did Sunset get to be like she is? I don't know; it's just how she is. Even an ordinary experience like school had a bad, and distinctly Sunset-style, effect on her. I'd say that the average IQ of School for Gifted Unicorns students is somewhere around 120, while Sunset's IQ -- like Twilight's -- is closer to 150; but while a normal genius would breeze through assignments for "mere" gifted students and then go find something else to do, Sunset breezed through them and concluded that she was as much better than everything in the world as she was better than her assignments. The right thing to do would probably have been to put her in college when she was thirteen (assuming that ponies and humans develop at the same speed), but Princess Celestia probably decided to keep her with her peers so that she'd have the chance to socialize and make friends. Princess Celestia is kind of useless that way... and evidently, when Sunset declared that the Princess was holding her back, she was right.

School also fed Sunset's exhibitionism. She was going to be the perfect student in every sense -- perfect grades, perfect looks, perfect relationship with the Princess -- and then rub everypony's noses in it; but before the showing off, she would be perfect. I can readily imagine that she loves splendor, but doesn't care about comfort -- that her accommodations at the School for Gifted Unicorns were disconcertingly spartan, and that at CHS, she stalked the school in her beautiful ensemble but then retired for the night to a janitor's closet, or a cheap, bare apartment, or the end of a drainpipe.

(Did I mention how much I love this setting? Where else would a figure like Princess Celestia be neither a great hero nor an evildoer, but just an ordinary pony who's way outside her comfort zone? Princess Celestia would be genuinely happy as a housewife -- or a schoolteacher -- but as the divine monarch of Equestria she's very memorably mis-cast.

(I've said before that Princess Celestia regards all those around her as her pets. There were three exceptions to this, if we follow the comics: Starswirl, her teacher, who she deceived and manipulated; Good King Sombra, who she ran off to for a final goodbye every week for a thousand years; and Sunset Shimmer, who caused her relief as well as heartbreak when she fled to another world.)

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Definitely sounds like the same wavelength, and I love that "yet". She will keep trying to be perfect, and she'll probably get there one day.

I'd be interested to hear more about your understanding of Princess Celestia, although that should probably be in a relevant forum. Believe it or not, I like her, and find the dynamic of her position versus her personality very fascinating -- although now that I think of it, there are definitely areas where her position and personality click very well. Just that she's not suffocated by her duties and their attendant protocols is extremely impressive.

(And although the picture of Pranklestia gorging on cake, trolling her sister, and making the aristocracy's lives miserable is charming, it can't possibly be true. The aristocracy would have revolted by now, in that case...)

4006315 I feel like I simultaneously strongly agree and strongly disagree; I wonder whether you, I, and Verbose Mode might all mean different things by "mean streak".

I'd call Sunset a mare in a hurry; she disdains those who are ambitious but not courageous (I think that that's what I was trying to say above), but she's not exactly going to go out of her way to be cruel, Diamond Tiara- or Queen Chrysalis-fashion. Before turning into a demon, she was perfectly willing to hurt others when they got in her way, and to preemptively attack those who might threaten her in the future; after her purification, she's still going to have the thought processes that led her to behave like that, but she's going to think long and hard before actually acting on them. (And she's probably outright lost her tendency to point and laugh, insofar as she had one.) She's still bold, self-controlled, and determined, but she knows that what she did was wrong -- she would be the first to admit it, and would probably deny that anyone else had anything to do with what she did -- and she came out of the experience tempered and chastened, a bit more mature than she was going in.

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Wish I had something meaningful to contribute, but I think you both have excellent points regarding Sunset's reformation.

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Contribute? Unless I'm mistaken, you already did; bringing up that point on Sunset's mean streak was pretty darn helpful!

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My theory is that the Elements of Harmony don't have yield settings. All that their wielders can do is invoke them; the Rainbow of Light (or whatever we'll call it) then reacts with its target on its own.

Sunset Shimmer and Princess Luna were both semi-possessed by nightmare-ness, which strengthens its wielder/victim (and gives them stage-villain tendencies), but puts their id in the driver's seat; it's like intoxication, if drunkenness granted you magic powers.

We've seen the Rainbow of Light used five times so far:
* Twice against Discord: both times turning him to stone.
* Twice against Princess Luna / Nightmare Moon: the first time imprisoning her, the second purifying her.
* Once against Sunset Shimmer, purifying her.

So, I think that sometimes the Rainbow of Light can't purify someone.

In Discord's case, I think it was because he is discord; I got the impression from The Return of Harmony that "discord" isn't the name of the draconequus in the garden, it's the name of what he's an embodiment of, and his own name -- if he knows it -- is probably something else.

In Nightmare Moon's case, I think that the first time she was hit with the rainbow, Princess Luna actively wanted to keep her nightmare powers, and so the Elements had to settle for banishing her to the moon -- and I think that she came out of that imprisonment chastened and improved, in contrast to what most fans evidently think.

But in Sunset Shimmer's case? Sunset sincerely believed that when she crowned herself, she'd turn into an alicorn (or the local equivalent). She believed that the crown was rightfully hers, and that taking what was hers by right could only have positive results. But, as she indicated in Rainbow Rocks with her keeping Princess Celestia's book, she didn't entirely believe that; she was repressing a fear that maybe she had already gone very badly wrong. And then, she had that fear proven right. She was horrified when the crown started turning her into a demon, and tried and failed to remove it; and then she got to see her demon self doing all the things that she was proud of herself for not doing. She saw that horrible fraction of a second -- the expressions of the Humane Six as they knew they were about to die -- as vividly as anyone who watched the movie, and she saw it in the real world, knowing that it was her fault. So when the Elements purified her, she needed no prompting to repent -- she was genuinely horrified at what she had done, and she now had proof that she had just squandered five or six years of her life, chasing a goal that had been morally indefensible from day one -- and that she had known was wrong from day one, on some level.

This, inevitably, left her badly shaken up. If she didn't come out of this with PTSD, I'd be surprised. (I'd recommend equine-assisted therapy as a means of recovering, and no, I'm not kidding, nor making a horse pun.) If she had been Japanese or ancient Roman, she would have committed suicide in that crater, as a way of carrying out against herself the death sentence that she herself would have readily said that she deserved. (You'll note that when Twilight looks down into the crater, she has no idea what she's going to see as the smoke clears, and her voice waivers as she shouts condemnation down towards Sunset.) Even as an Equestrian-Californian, I think that if Twilight had ordered her to go home and face judgement, she would have obeyed without question.

I'd see three burdens that Sunset would be shouldering as a result of this: the horror of what she did; the sense that she deserved to be punished, or at least didn't deserve friendship (would the events of the cyberbullying special bother Sunset less than they bother her fans?); and the loss of an overarching purpose and direction in her life. Trying to become an alicorn is a worthy goal for a pony, but after her wicked first attempt ended in nightmare-hood, the thought of divine power probably makes Sunset feel queasy; I doubt she's in any hurry to make a virtuous second attempt. I still expect her to ultimately become an alicorn, but by doing it the right way -- backing into alicornhood, happening to acquire the traits that she needs for coronation -- paradoxically making her a better ruler than she would have been had she consciously pursued coronation, even by virtuous means.

The resulting Sunsetcorn is going to be awe-inspiring. Princess Celestia in three thousand years hasn't had the experiences that Sunset Shimmer has had in eighteen; Sunset will be able to lead and rule with a depth of wisdom and understanding that no one else in the pentarchy will be able to touch. This is why Americans are so fond of voting for politicians with troubled pasts -- although, as a country, we lack discernment, and so tend to vote for Trixie when she passes herself off as Sunset.

Verbose Mode, it sounds like we disagree on Sunset's trajectory in and after the end of Equestria Girls, and we've finally pinned down where and how we disagree; but for what it's worth, I think that the Humane Five pulling Sunset into their Airsoft team would have had very impressive healing effects on her psyche, very quickly. In Rainbow Rocks, everypony's hesitance around Sunset -- putting her in a category apart, simultaneously fearing to be involved with her and treating her with kid gloves -- is holding her back, keeping her inner wounds from healing; once Sunset becomes the friend, comrade, and de facto leader of the Humane Five, she would hardly continue to see herself as primarily the pony who tried to kill them. So I'd expect the Friendship Games Sunset Shimmer to be fairly similar to the Shooting for Friendship one.

And all this is in addition to how I described Sunset above. One thing you can't say about Sunset Shimmer is that she's a simple pony, or an easy one to understand.

Speaking of not simple to understand: I just cracked open The Freeport Venture and was blown away. She may not be very good at dealing with (or caring about) long-term consequences, but Sunset Shimmer is extremely quick-witted and adaptable on the small scale... Post-reformation, both of these traits (adaptability, indifference to the future) are probably less pronounced, or at least tempered by her lower ruthlessness; but Sunset will never be paranoid, and she only thinks she's sly.