A few words about Wallflower Blush · 8:18pm Feb 19th, 2018
First, of course, you're gonna need to go watch Friendship Forgotten before you read this blog, because duh. :V
Second, you're gonna want to read Skywriter's ranking of EQG villains because it's goofy and amazing and wrong
And then you can click the little button. V:
So the thing that gets me about Wallflower is that hers is a hell of her own creation.
When she's first introduced and everyone keeps going, "Wait, who are you again?" I'm sitting there going, "Background Pony is canon!Her special talent is being overlooked or something!" For the whole special, I chalked her problems up to something more or less magical in nature, just a simple aspect of her very existence from which she couldn't run.
Except that, right at the very end, what does she tell us? She was using the Memory Stone to take small bits of people's memories of her. Specifically, the bad memories. Any time she screwed up social interaction, poof, it was suddenly no longer an issue! And given how self-conscious and awkward she comes off, you have to imagine she was doing this frequently.
But every time, she was erasing a piece of herself. She was overdoing it.
So this leaves us with a very powerful message at the end of this special that, almost as if it were intended on a meta level, no one really makes a big deal out of. Specifically, the idea that if you try and run from your past, if you don't embrace the bad memories along with the good, you'll be left with nothing. You'll be left as nothing.
And I'm just really impressed by that moral and how it's delivered. "Hasbro doesn't do subtle", as my friend said.
Does this make her a better villain? Well, probably not, but come on, Juniper may be cuter, but I have no idea what she was even hoping to accomplish there. :V I'm just giving Skywriter shit because he used the phrase "fucking psycho hose beast" and that seems hilariously out of character for him. XD
I never took the message this far. Fascinating extrapolation. Thanks for sharing it.
Great, now I'm replaying Wayne's World quotes and scenes in my head. Cha!
Also, I do like the character of Wallflower Blush and how she exasperated her own problem. She had a crutch and abused it to the point where she couldn't go back. Well, until it got "lit up".
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Plus, "I have plants" is just fuckin' adorable. Not top-tier waifu material or anything, but come on. :V
Thanks for recommending forgotten friendship. I can't say it was good, but like many things I watch online and netflix, it was entertaining. I can definitely see why people love SS so much (I was always partial to her design), but you can definitely tell she is played by a 43 year old, and that with the other VAs causes a Dawson's Creek age dissonance.
Eh. She gets classed under 'monsters' with Glimmer for me. Mind control is fucking with someone's very sense of personhood. Gaslighting them on a level that makes them unable to prove you are objectively lying is not an act of a misguided person.
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...Yeah, that's why she's the villain. <.<
I'm glad I'm not the only person that immediately jumped to Background Pony. The girl is mint green, for God's sake!
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No hoodie, though, just that gross sweater she probably lives in. :B
Most "Evil Fluttershy-esque" villain ever, that's for sure.
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Agree. Also agree with PP's "that's why she's the villain." Also, Pinkie was pissed enough to shitcan the friendship speech and go straight for rainbow lasers. I approve of this action quite a lot.
I'm still stuck on how adorably vulnerable Sunset was when she lost all her human memories. Holy shit, I want to hug her so much. Hasbro managed to make me care about their ex-villain on a personal level, and that deserves some kinda accolades even if EQG in general hasn't been the best thing ever.
I think the message isn't even just about running from/avoiding the past, but also the idea that other actions centered around the avoidance of bad interactions, at the expense of potential good ones, can similarly leave you with nothing. After all, how much difference is there (for the people on the other side) between her erasing that awkward time she tried to say hi in the hall or class, and her just having never decided to in the first place?
I think my problem with her is that she wasn't sad or compelling, just pathetic. In the wake of things like mass shootings in high schools, Wallflower stealing memories wholesale (essentially lives) for the sake of something as petty as not being remembered the exact way you want to be remembered makes me about as sympathetic towards her as a rock rolling downhill. Which makes the mane seven's apology for acting justifiably angry and horrified by what she's doing even more grating. In a perfect world, we really would be able to fix things like memory wipes with something as simple as a rainbow hug, but this isn't a perfect world, and it just makes EQG even more of a confused mess that it even tries to act like high school, a place of stress and even trauma for some, can be as perfect as magic ponies. It's becoming High School Musical on crack. If we're going for our own utopia, keep it where it belongs: in an Equestria far, far away. EQG is just ponies without hooves and it's silly to think it's anything else, which I guess brings up the question of why it exists at all anymore?
That and the script never actually came out and said everything watchers of the special are, which doesn't say anything good about the original. I can't remember a single instance of Wallflower actually making these kinds of statements herself, or even acting like they were what drove her. Just a generalized, awkwardly specific hatred of Sunset Shimmer, who didn't go from "not noticed" to "noticed," but "infamous" to "famous." It's a big difference, and a disconnect I can't really get over.