More on mental illness and "Forgotten Friendship"

First off, I've been having technical problems. Sorry for all resultant delays. (They are still ongoing.)

Second, some people thought that I was unfair in my characterization of the human six in Forgotten Friendship vis-à-vis their treatment of Sunset after forgetting pretty much everything she'd done of note since the end of the first movie. Not all of that conversation took right here and in public, so some people might be wondering what in Tartarus I'm talking about.

Short version, after Forgotten Friendship came out I wrote about how the way the human six (the Equestria Girls main seven minus Sunset) handled Sunset was particularly bad when you looked at it from their perspective instead of from the, "We saw that a magical thing happened, and even if we hadn't we're well aware that Sunset is right," that comes more easily to the audience. Why? Because Sunset comes across as mentally ill and their response to that is to be jerks.

As far as they know, Sunset is someone, with whom they have no relationship to speak of, who is acting like they have an established relationship while talking about things that never happened and generally not making sense.

Their response is to be mean.

One of the areas where I got called out for being unfair was in supposedly expecting real people faced with such a thing to act the way hypothetical people should act.

As a counterexample I offer the Boston T. Specifically the northern half of the Orange Line.

The subway?

No, not exactly. In central areas it's certainly a subway, but after North Station it's above ground and flirts with being a an L (elevated train) between stops for a bit, seems to commit to elevation by making its penultimate stop an elevated stop, and then returns to a ground train for the final stop at Oak Grove. There's a reason that they call it "The T" instead of "The Subway"; things are complicated (even within a single line.)

Anyway, our journey begins at Oak Grove. I got onto the last car, because it's closest to my exit at Downtown Crossing, and was one of only two people to choose to sit near the middle. The other one was . . . not well. I didn't realize it at first, but by the time we got the elevated stop (which is the very next stop, Malden Center) it had become very clear that her reality was not the one the rest of the passengers were in.

She was acting like she had established relationships with passengers who had clearly never even met her and talking about things that never happened. That's the part that was just like Sunset in Forgotten Friendship. Here's the bit that wasn't: she was hostile, she was angry, she was in peoples faces and at times crudely sexual and insulting and so many other things.

Not one person was a jerk to her. Not one. No one was even the least bit rude.

The people who she verbally attacked were calm with her. Conciliatory. Accommodating.

Maybe the population of the Boston T on the Sunday after Saint Patrick's day is entirely composed of saints (except for me, I'm not actually a Bostonian and so am presumably exempt), but I don't think that's it. I think that it's more the case that when confronted with someone who is obviously suffering from something, the natural inclination is not to kick them when they're down but rather to avoid exacerbating things.

And yes, it is freaky, and it is disturbing. Even though sane people are demonstrably more dangerous while the mentally ill are less prone to violence, there's a fear there. Television, books, movies, theater, and so forth have all exploited said-fear to great effect. Someone is playing by different rules, the usual things don't apply, and it's unnerving and so forth. There's a reason that people call certain heinous acts "crazy" even when they're usually committed by people with no mental illness.

But that doesn't mean that you antagonize someone. In purely colloquial terms Sunset seemed to be nuts. She came up to people who barely knew her, acted like they were friends, and talked about being in places they remembered her not being. At that point her history as, "Well, four major and some minor magical crises ago, she used to be mean," goes out the window because it doesn't matter. Unless you've got a direct line to writers and know authorial intent, this seems to be a case of Sunset being beset by delusions. Just like the woman on the train.

Unlike the woman on the train Sunset wasn't angry, rude, and paranoid. She was nice, confused, and hurt.

Historically our culture's treatment of the mentally ill is horrendous. Presently it's still pretty crap. Lives are ruined by the way we treat these issues. And yet . . .

And yet take random people who are crammed into a sealed metal box which is too hot, has an odd smell, is sealed with no escape more often than it is open, and generally moving at a decent clip meaning that even if you did pry the doors open you'd still be trapped, then present them with someone assuming relationships that don't exist and talking about things that didn't happen, and then make that person be a jerk about it so they have as much reason as possible to be mean right back, they won't pull a Forgotten Friendship.

I may not be perfectly in tune with the kids these days in the poly-chromatic world, but I know know that the way the human six treated apparently mentally ill (actually just fine) Sunset Shimmer is downright nasty by Boston T standards as of this afternoon.

* * *

Since this post was inspired by something that happened on a train and Forgotten Friendship, have something that I've always pictured taking place on a train (boxcar not subway car.) It's an AU in which Sunset missed the sundown on the third day deadline but succeeded in talking Wallflower down. They're now journeying to try to find other artifacts dumped in the human realm in hopes that one of them will allow memories of Sunset to be restored. It's bare bones, barely set apart from script form, and I have no plans to fill it out into an actual story.

Written in one spurt on February 19th
Untitled Sunset--Wallflower Conversation

"I've been thinking about something; you're not gonna like it," Wallflower said.

"I don't like anything these days," Sunset said.

"It's worse than all that," Wallflower said. "It's something you're not going to like even if we find a way around the three day limit and restore everyone's memories."

Sunset groaned. "Just tell me."

"I took the memories of the good stuff you did after you reformed," Wallflower said, "and that's horrible, and I'm sorry, and I'll spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you, even though it'll probably never be enough, but that's all I did. I didn't give them any memories, I didn't fill in the holes created, I didn't alter the things that remained to fit my worldview."

"And I've known this since before I convinced you to stop," Sunset said.

"But have you ever really thought about what it must have looked like from their perspective?" Wallflower asked.

"Someone who wasn't their friend said she was," Sunset said. "What's to think about?"

"I've been trying to imagine what it must have been like for them," Wallflower said. "The results are disturbing."

"Do tell me about your wondrous thought experiments," Sunset said.

"This is not a thing to be sarcastic about," Wallflower said. "This is serious.

"They know you've been at the school, but can't remember much of anything you've done," Wallflower said, "so they have to think you haven't been up to no good anymore. You may not be a hero in their minds, but your lack of notoriety means you have reformed. You're no longer bad.

"Since they can't remember you being friends with anyone they think you just went reclusive or some such. Then one day you show up and start acting like you've been friends all along."

"And they reject me because they remember me not being present for everything I said I was there for," Sunset's voice was tending dangerously in the direction of growl.

"So look at it from their perspective," Wallflower said. "One of the sirens, say the poofy one--"

"Adagio," Sunset said.

"She comes up to you and acts like you two are friends. She says you've been friends for ages. You don't remember any of it," Wallflower said. "What do you think?"

"That she's crazy."

"Exactly," Wallflower said. "What do you do when you find out a mentally ill person, a harmless one, trusts and respects you because they mistakenly think you're their friend?"

"You try to steer them in the direction of treatment if you can," Sunset said, "brush them off with minimum damage if you can't."

"Not insult them?" Wallflower asked. "Not throw long past grievances in their face and tell them they're a horrible person?"

"Of course n--" Sunset stopped. "Shit."

"I told you you wouldn't like it," Wallflower said.

"We're still getting everyone's memories back," Sunset said.

"Of course we are," Wallflower said. "It's just . . . what are you going to do afterward?"

"No idea," Sunset said. "I'll think of something."