Fic recs, March 21st: Anon-a-Miss edition! · 12:59pm Mar 21st, 2018
Something I'd been contemplating recently was diving into the "Anon-a-Miss" trend that's been sweeping the featured box for the last year and change. And then my hand was tipped, so it was time to delve the seedy underbelly of Fimfiction and find out what the big deal was.
Of course, I tried to figure out where this all started. Searching for "anon-a-miss" in the Fimfiction browse function brings up results all the way back to 2012, but of course that's just a string of words. There are reaction fics from back at the end of 2014, when the comic issue came out; the first of those is Almost Too Late by Final Sunlight, which I reviewed last year. Moving into 2015, there's about one fic a month based around the comic, which isn't too surprising. In October of that year, Dainn posted Anon-a-Miss, which I review here, and in December of 2015, the trend picks up. There are quite a few reaction fics, while the rest seem to mostly be the 'poor, pathetic Sunset' sort, all written within a few months of each other.
August of 2016 is where it really takes off, however. And while they aren't all related, some even being sequels to other stories, I think we can point to Bitter Tears (again, reviewed below) as the place where it all really began. Maybe. I mean, this is kind of a disjointed, but just look at how many were written within days of each other. I still don't know what caught people's minds, but we're about to find out.
...The ratings should give you an idea of what you're in for. :B EQG tag assumed for all of these.
H: 0 R: 0 C: 1 V: 0 N: 4
Anon-a-Miss by Dainn
Genre: AU/Dark/Drama
No one believes Sunset when she tells them she's not behind the mysterious leaks of personal student information. She's going to get to the bottom of things, one way or another.
I really have to wonder why this was written. I mean, I like dark fics as much as the next asshole, but this is grim and gritty. It's one thing to take the EQG setting more seriously than the show does; it's quite another to call in the police and FBI. This is a story where Gilda lures Sunset into a trap, after which Sunset's beaten half to death by a mob of angry students and tied up in an abandoned factory ahead of Christmas break. There's no joy in this whatsoever; this story exists to make the characters suffer for what they went through. There are even passages, from both sides of the conflict, talking about how various sides got off too easily for the things they did in the movies. And it's like, yeah, they got off easily because the alternative was too like what would happen in our own world. That happens every day! No one wants to read about that! D: Or at least, I don't. But that's all a matter of tastes. This is actually competently written, with solid tension and good action scenes. Granted, I take some umbrage with just how capable Snips is, but that and the portrayal of the police are probably the only things I would point to as actual problems. It's just going to take a certain desire to see justice meted out as thoroughly as possible — while also getting Sunset into worse shape than the comics left her — for anyone to want to read this, I reckon. Like, if EQG, Rainbow Rocks and/or the appropriate issue of the comics had you howling for blood, here ya go.
Not Recommended
Bitter Tears: An Anon-a-Miss Fanfic by hattafan2593
Genre: Drama
Sunset thought she could trust her friends. But after Anon-a-Miss, she's not sure she can trust anyone.
This is maybe a little less melodramatic than the last fic, but not by much. I will say, the first chapter caught my attention by having Sonata show up out of nowhere and just be an adorable chatterbox. It was unexpectedly charming. I guess the writing isn't too bad either, and the few typos I saw in the first couple chapters never made a resurgence. But this is, at heart, a story about vindictive drama and the failure of forgiveness to provide justice in the world. <.< Seriously, this is just people yelling: Applejack, Rarity and Rainbow yell at their sisters (with some good ol' Scootabuse on the side!); Sunset yells at her friends, the principals, and Flash Sentry; Twilight yells at everyone; and the Dazzlings try to blackmail them at the end, which leads to more yelling. It's one thing to think the show — which, I'll remind you, this is not from — hasn't gone far enough in punishing someone or resolving a bad situation. I'm one to talk, lord knows I'm still salty about Starlight. But somewhere in the middle of this, I was struck by the odd realization that if literally anyone had the capacity to forgive, this could all have been avoided. It was needless. The punishments and recriminations just escalate and escalate, requiring the involvement of more and more people, because no one is willing or able to stop the cycle.
I'm reading these stories to try and figure out why they've caught the site's attention, so please allow me a moment to do some psychoanalytical guesswork. (If only because I have decided, for the sake of my own sanity, to cut this blog down from 4 novelettes and 6 one-shots to half that number. c.c) If you check out the comments on chapter three of this story, you'll notice the first few have something in common: large numbers of downvotes and the posters complaining about this being "yet another forgiveness fic". I was struck by that, but it might just explain why these stories are so popular. I can only assume that there are people, in this fandom as well as in the world at large, who don't believe in forgiveness. And I have to feel bad for them. I mean, they've likely been hurt by people in ways similar to what Sunset went through, or maybe not, but I can only imagine their lives are awful. They can't be fulfilled unless they see someone getting exactly what they deserve for whatever wrong they've committed.
In which case they're watching the wrong fucking show and I have to wonder if they've even paid attention to it. :| I mean, part of it is "you could learn" and part of it is "what are you even doing here?" I don't know, I don't get other people most of the time. But if a side canon story that wasn't particularly good is going to make you genuinely upset, Anon-a-Miss is it, and stories like this will hopefully give you the catharsis you desire. Because otherwise, being in this fandom is probably just making you miserable, and that's a shame.
To continue, this fic shares a few things with Dainn's, and I don't just mean structural themes like long stretches of people yelling at each other and/or meting out detailed punishments. I'm talking things like strong authority figures who Must Always Be Right and what I would almost term a belief that people are inherently sinful? Like, for all that Celestia and Luna do a lot of the verbal beat-down-ing, they get a lot of blame from Sunset as well. I took severe umbrage with that. A major point in this story is that the Sirens' magic wasn't mind-control, it just removed people's inhibitions that kept them from saying all the shitty things they thought about each other. You know, the things that you keep to yourself because you realize they're shitty and you don't want to hurt people, not because you're inherently shitty and just looking for an excuse to cut loose.
I just feel like these two stories, and possibly the rest of them, are coming at all of this from the wrong angle. If you're one of those people, please know that forgiveness is possible. Not easy, but possible; people by and large are not that bad. But what do I know, really?
Not Recommended
Exposing Anon-a-Miss by KR Chrome
Genre: Drama
Diamond Tiara gets some evidence and blows the Anon-a-Miss case wide open.
In looking for AoM fics, I found a lot by KR Chrome. Not sure how they showed up so high in the search results (I think I sorted by rating), but I think we've already affirmed that I will not ever understand this trope. Anyway, this is a very plainly written and telly story in which Diamond Tiara outs the CMCs as Anon-a-Miss. That's literally it. There is an interesting thread about Diamond looking up to Sunset, especially back when she was a bully, and at the end, they enter into a mentorship because… I dunno, Sunset goes back to being bad? This was all very perfunctory and just sort of goes over the same points as the previous two stories in one-tenth the words. The Diamond/Sunset relationship was squandered, which is a shame, because it's a neat idea.
Not Recommended
It's Always the Same by TheWingedNarwhal
Genre: Time Loop
Every Christmas, Anon-a-Miss returns to ruin Sunset's reputation and send the school into chaos.
This sets up the idea that Anon-a-Miss is happening again and again for Sunset, on a two-week loop, to the point where she's given up and just trudges through her days, having memorized everything that will happen. Something weird occurs at the end, but nothing comes of it. At least this one's different, but talk about squandered ideas. It could have been so much better.
Not Recommended
Anon-a-Miscommunication. by Sun Aura
Genre: Fixfic
These stories must be re-relating the comic, because I swear the opening scene of this one is exactly the same as Anon-a-Miss. Maybe they're just all running together at this point. Who knows! Anyway, this is basically "What if Sunset's friends believed her and then figured out who Anon-a-Miss was all by themselves?" (While snarking about what happened in the actual comic as a "boy, glad we didn't do that!") And, I mean, it's easy when they have Equestrian magic on their side, but it's also somewhat dull. This is almost a comedic inversion of the "people are evil and forgiveness doesn't exist" worldview of the first two stories, no less naively single-minded. Still, I will give it points for at least getting into the CMCs' motives. I mean, all the other fics have been happy to stick with "they didn't get invited to a sleepover", but here we something a good bit more in-depth. (And language, Scootaloo, for fuck's sake! XD) Everyone comes to a nice, agreeable understanding in the end, thanks to the power of open communication and a really cheesy Hearth's Warming carol making them pony up. <.< Again, not the greatest drama, for all that it's here, but after all that? I'll take it.
Recommended If You Want to See Anon-a-Miss Done Better
Stay tuned, I will post a thing either tonight or tomorrow. <.<
There's a famous quote the premise of which I fundamentally disagree with, but which accidentally highlights an important truth: “For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.”
The "innocent" and "wicked" bits are easily enough shown not to jive with reality (whoever said that didn't work at an elementary school...), but kids, as a whole, are a lot more interested in seeing every wrong and slight redressed--not just for themselves, but in life and media in general. The difference, as far as I can tell, is a lack of empathy; empathy is something you learn, and most children aren't very good at it yet.
So when a person (kid or adult) does something wrong, they've always got their reasons for it, because they wouldn't do it otherwise. When a well-adjusted adult sees someone else do something, they tend to assume that they, too, have their reasons (they may not be good or sufficient reasons, but adults don't assume that everyday conflicts are caused by someone being evil!). Many children, on the other hand, would skip straight to "I can see from over here that doing that is wrong, therefor the person doing it is bad," to which the natural reaction is retribution.
So, as far as your psychoanalysis goes, my two cents are that the people in the fandom who are obsessed with fixing a long list of situations where this or that character "got off too easy" are probably just young--we've got a lot of kids in this fandom, don't forget!--or are a bit on the less empathetic side, and have trouble seeing the contradictions in "if I did something bad because it was the best option available to me or even because I wasn't thinking straight in the heat of the moment, I'd want everyone to recognize that and accept my genuine apology and acknowledge my remorse without piling on," and "everyone needs some laser-guided karma to hit them ASAP after they screw up."
4821714 "...So, as far as your psychoanalysis goes, my two cents are that the people in the fandom who are obsessed with fixing a long list of situations where this or that character "got off too easy" are probably just young--we've got a lot of kids in this fandom, don't forget!--or are a bit on the less empathetic side,..."
Not just this fandom. The list of Harry Potter 'Fixfics' is long as Dumbledore's beard. There seems to be a particular brand amongst them which considers Dumbledore's actions to have been terribly cruel and unwarranted, and in return, they write the most horrible things inflicted on the old man. In short, it is a result of the readers not trying to understand the reasoning behind his actions: He places Harry with the Dursley's because that is the only family he has left, and the Dursley's *do* try their best to protect him against what they see as the same threat that killed his parents (i.e. Magic), he does not reveal much of his plan to Harry because he fears Harry is connected to Voldemort, et al...
(We will not, for sanity's sake, cover any of the Harry/Draco/Veela fics)
I very much appreciated your tangent/analysis/rant in the middle of the second review, it brought a lot of context to the whole and very much needed saying
I can't say I'm much of a fan of Anon-A-Miss stories (all the FIM comics I've glanced at seemed terrible, with that one top of the pile, and the stories themselves tend to be flawed, one-sided, petty etc...)
That said, Empty Skies was the most enjoyable one I've read, for having the unusual angle of Sunset going to hang out with the EG Wonderbolts instead, a friendship pairing I hadn't seen before.
I'll mirror a bit what Georg said in that other fandoms are just as likely to write "fixfics" or "bash fics" to let out frustrations with characters and situations that are distasteful to them. I think the Anon-a-Miss story really hit home for some people given the prevalence of social media nowadays. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these stories are the authors' way of dealing with issues going on in their own lives. Readers and reviewers too, by the looks of it. I can only hope that their outlook on life gets better if that's the case.
Yeah, this is a random fic-fad (there's got to be a better name for that) that I totally missed. Then again, I'm a pretentious iconoclast who writes pony pastiches of stuff 99% of FIMfiction hasn't ever heard of before (by the way, you should review some more Sentry Papers to get the taste out of your mouth. /shamelessplug).
Although ... now I'm vaguely wondering if I should get drunk and write my OWN take on it.
Anon-a-Miss ... INFORMATION.
images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51KFyONk5QL._SY450_.jpg
Sentinels/EQG crossover!
Oh wait, they've got superpowers now, don't they.
This could work.
CRAP.
That's a lesson that I learned when I wrote Second Birthday. There was a sizable contingent of readers that were really irritated that there wasn't enough punishment/retribution in the story. I was trying to get people to understand that the story, and the series, isn't about perfect justice. It's about friendship and forgiveness, even if you're the wronged party. It definitely wasn't what that section of readers wanted, though. I can't point out a hundred faults with that story, but to the day, I don't think that "Twilight's friends didn't get punished, thereby making everyone in the story equally unhappy" is one of them.
4821714
This is known as the Fundamental Attribution Error.
4821714
I'm inclined to agree. Add in the autism aspect, and you're dealing with probably hundreds if not thousands of people who can't understand how other people's minds works and are really hung up on following rules.
4821727
I love you :D
Wait, you don't like me? But I'm best pony! :<
There was an Anon-A-Miss I don't remember if I read but Sunset killed herself because the bullying which struck me at once as stupid and pretty okay.
Pretty okay in that her life gets pretty fucked during the comic, stupid in that she is literally an adult (in her 30s) and knows she can at any time go home to Equestria if they no longer want her around on Earth.
Oh boy, my favorite part of the fandom!
Why is Anon-A Miss still a thing? It was a poorly written story placed at the wrong time. It should take place after the first movie, not after the second movie. It's a pile of trash.
4821803
Actually, there seems to be some time dilation going on between the two worlds (like chronicles of Narnia). One year of high school has been the equivalent of at least 3 seasons, which have covered more than one year. As evidenced by multiple hearthswarming episodes.
So sunset might have the body of an adult pony when she crosses over, but her mind is that of a fairly mature teenager. With no real life experience in Equestria.
4821876
No matter how you shake it, Sunset is somewhere between 20 and 30. She was Twilight's age when she left Equestria, which was ten years before canon.
Man, I looked at those chapter 3 comments you mentioned. My favorite part is the guy who says "screw forgiveness" and then "I swear to God himself." Those seem rather mutually exclusive to me.
I asked the question of why there's been a resurgence in Anon-A-Miss stories lately, and WandererD replied that maybe Forgotten Friendship rekindled those thoughts of Sunset being treated unfairly. Seems like that could be a valid reason.
4821954
But the resurgence happened even before that. It was everywhere in 2017.
4822049
Yeah, but there was another one really recently. I saw 3 or 4 of these fics in the FB in the last month, whereas you'd go months without seeing one before that. Not that people weren't necessarily writing them, but there weren't a cluster of them.
Ah, yes, Anon-A-Miss. The boil on the fandom's arse.
I'll add my own $0.02, because I cannot rip on these fics enough: Not only do these fic writers display a lack of maturity, but also a trememdous hypocrisy that would be startling to an outside observer.
I have not seen one, even one, Anon-A-Miss fic that treats the Humane 5 with any degree of empathy. Examine their perspective for a moment: Sunset Hitler made their lives terrible for years, and broke up their friendship using technology and feigned identities. She then tried to murder them, and only conveniently showed regret once she was defeated. Then the alien horse princess wizard volunteered them to be her new friends.
It is quite natural to be suspicious and even resentful in those circumstances, and quite understandable that Sunset be suspected for the Anon-A-Miss posts. They were, after all, exactly her previous MO. And the Mane 5 are not world saving heroes, but human teens: awkward bundles of hormones who just got humiliated in front of the whole school. They cannot be counted on to be rational, and cannot be blamed for their emotions.
And yet, in the fixfics, they get yelled at, guilted, and murdered. To every one of those authors I would ask: If they deserve this, what does Sunset - who did more, worse, and with genuine cruel intent - deserve?
4821727
You've.. you've fixed the story. You win. So beautiful...
4821817
I've talked about this a lot in the Rage Review forum, but tl;dr - the author thought he was writing it pre-RR, but the book created a continuity error, so her retroactively made it post. Which created like ten continuity errors, including why the grass was green if RR took place between EQG 1 (Fall) And Holiday Special (winter), why no one in RR seems dressed for fall or winter, and how the Rainbooms reconnected as friends, practiced instruments, got gud, and put together a band all in like a month, why the trashed school was completely repaired in a month...
For what it's worth, the comics aren't technically canon anyway, so I think it's pretty valid to interpret as pre-RR.
4821954
I wonder if anyone asked that
Who did more and worse, with active malicious intent.
mouth breathergentleman if "screw forgiveness" applied to Sunset after EQG 1.I was going to make some long-winded comments about moral development, but 4821714's comment tackles the same ideas in a much more digestible/eloquent manner.
To add to the scientific citations (as started by 4821764), Kohlberg's stages of moral development is another theory that may be relevant. A major idea is that at certain stages, morality is dictated not by personal ideals, but only by extrinsic rules and laws. Like all theories, it isn't perfect, but it has some interesting ideas in it.
Taking off my teacher hat, I'm glad someone dug into this so I could be more firm in ignoring it. Some people do journalism about tax fraud and political corruption, but someone needs to do it for fanfic.
I've often said that the most disturbing Dark fic is one that could fit into the show. Forgiveness is an important aspect of the show, but forgiveness and darkness are not mutually exclusive. My Conquer trilogy is kind of about this: there is murder and darkness and death, but the characters do eventually forgive each other. In many ways, forgiveness can create more problems and stronger emotions than spite or bitterness can.
But like you said, this fad appears to be more about torches and pitchforks than trying to make a good story.
4822109
Sure. I don't think anyone does, though.
4821954
Lol, that God/forgiveness one is pretty good.!
This whole genre's pretty ripe for parody IMO. Lately I've felt a wild hair to try some kind of gonzo Limestone-flavored bastardization of it. If I can get an idea to coalesce, it is on.
You forgot to review mine, although I should warn you, it may cause you to break your rating system and give it 6/5 stars https://www.fimfiction.net/story/397154/cassandra-vs-anon-a-miss
Wow, this might be one of the lowest-rated collection of reviews of yours I've ever seen...
4821714 4821715 4822109 On forgiveness, I think it's a wonderful thing and can be a great process to build a story around. And yeah, it's central to FiM and some of my other favorite media. But... I do think that it's not always handled elegantly in the show or comics. Sometimes it just seems like too much, too fast, without much from the side receiving it indicating contrition, sometimes it's just the fact that it happens immediately and almost (but not quite--Sombra, Tirek, and at first Discord, for instance) as a matter of course, to the extent that Chrysalis throwing an offer to reform back in their face along with a giant pair of middle fingers as she backflipped off that cliff was a wonderful refreshing moment. That sentence may have gotten away from me a bit, but the point is that forgiveness tends to be hard, often for the person receiving it as well as those offering, and tossing it there in a couple seconds/panels at the end of an issue/episode doesn't really allow for a diffusion of the emotions leading up to that point. I think that's part of why it really helps to put a real threat there beforehand (or at least feeling thereof)--think S1E2, with that tense moment when Celestia shows up, seeming so powerful and hard towering over the diminished and washed out Luna, before embracing her. Or even the after-the-fact diffusion through humor (with recognition that even with forgiveness, there's still responsibility) of Luna giving Sunset the broom at the end of EG1.
I guess I'm saying I think forgiveness feels better when it's given some emotional weight, and treated like something other than a matter of course. For all that their world is lightened, after all, stories about ponies are stories about people, and for most people forgiveness isn't immediate, isn't complete, isn't automatic--and it's more meaningful for it.
4822109
There I think there are also some implicit baselining going on. She's on top, taking over everything and about to invade another world, then summarily defeated and humiliated. I figure a lot of people see that as a significant hit on its own (or even just the fall from the top of the social heirarchy), rather than comparing to what her warranted preexisting status was.
4823106
Forgiveness is by and large never handled elegantly in the show. Or, at best, the elegance thereof is inversely proportional to how dire the situation was. (i.e., they always fuck up with major villains)
But "it's not perfect, therefore YAKS SMASH FORGIVENESS" (holy shit, I hate yaks but that is such a useful meme, I wasn't even planning to do that) is stupid. :B Just like yaks.
4823199
I dont suppose you could review my take on, anon-a-miss could you.
If you wish too, its called "hell is for children"
4823215
Well, I wouldn't consider it until it's complete, number one.
Number two, unless the 'twists' mentioned in the description are along the lines of "isn't an Anon-a-Miss" fic, I'm not going to like it. :| I mean, look at these reviews again and ask yourself if this is really something you want to happen.
4823217
Well, firstly yes its anon-a-miss, so that counts against me.
Honestly, it seems that all the ones mentioned, seem entirely one sided, or an idea squandered.
But i won't make you read it if you don't want to.
Since you won't likely be reading this, the twist is that Tirek is the hero, plus a few other things.
4823217
Lastely, i enjoy a bit of scathing realism once in a while.
4823199
True about a lot of people, probably more true about our special little community:
4823106
I would argue two counter-points here:
1. The CMC got six months of detention following Anon-A-Miss (six months more than Sunset did after trying to murder everyone, I never get tired of noting that), and the Mane 5 made embarrassed apologies (and didn't do anything *wrong* per se in the first place). The notion that such things aren't enough is the childish rage of a Sunset Shimmer fanatic, not an adult.
2. Beating Sunset into a crater wasn't "punishment." It was justifiable violence against a hostile and aggressive force who would destroy them if not defeated. Punishment is what comes after the person is defeated. To say that her fall from power is "punishment enough" again seems more an excuse for a Sunset cultist trying to justify slaughtering the CMC in their revenge-porn fic.
4823471
So, I don't really see those as counterpoints. I was pointing out a cognitive bias or two I thought were contributing to inconsistent feelings with respect to Sunset and the CMC: framing and a tendency to feel more strongly for the powerful/rich/fortunate than the already downtrodden.*
*ETA: This is something that's been remarked on a fair amount, from Aristotle's breakdown of the appropriate subjects for comedy and tragedy to Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments--"A stranger to human nature, who saw the indifference of men about the misery of their inferiors, and the regret and indignation which they feel for the misfortunes and sufferings of those above them, would be apt to imagine, that pain must be more agonizing, and the convulsions of death more terrible to persons of higher rank, than to those of meaner stations..."--to things we can see around us today, like the difference between punishments for white collar and poor-people crime.
4823106 4823199 4823471 Here we have a theological point that I always have issues with: Mercy vs. Forgiveness. I have about as much experience in theology as I do in quantum mechanics, so bear with me.
Forgiveness is earned. You have to work for it. Humans like forgiveness. You hurt me. You did recompense in an amount equal or greater than the hurt. I forgive you.
Mercy is divine. (in basic Christian theology, at least, not counting Catholics.) It does not need to be earned, and does not need to be accepted, or even wanted. It is extended in full, with no reservations or caveats. When Luna was defeated by Twilight and the Elements, what Celestia offered was mercy, plain and simple. There was no demand that she do some sort of penance. There was no request that Luna ask first. She just *gave* it.
With Starlight Glimmer, much the same happened. Twilight tried to help, and when Starlight accepted, that was it. No "You have to spend time in prison." No "You can't be trusted around my friends." Just mercy. Now admittedly there was a "Let's go visit all the places where you were before so we can show them how much you changed" tour involved. Just because you accept mercy, does not mean you're immune to the desire to pay it back, and to pay it forward to others.
Humans don't take to mercy well. We want revenge. Payback. Punishment. Perhaps we should all just try to be more like a certain divine equine.
4824633
No, not... maybe? No, I don't think so. You should forgive someone even if they don't apologize, just as you should apologize even if they won't forgive you. Forgiveness does not require something from the forgiven.
4824655
Doesn't it, though? I mean, you can forgive yourself, I suppose, but the usual connotation of "to be forgiven" is that someone is giving it to you.
Wow, this is crazy confusing and complicated. c.c
4824664
I don't think so. If you shoot me and don't regret it, I can still forgive you.
4824665
Oh wait, I misread what you said. >.< This is why I don't do philosophy.
Sorry about the late response, I find this topic interesting and couldn’t resist.
I’ll fully admit Anon-A-Miss is a guilty pleasure of mine. I’ve looked quite a bit into it, and here are my two cents. First off, Chris was definitely right, many of the Anon-A-Miss people that I’ve talked to are high school and younger. That’s been covered pretty well here.
As for why it keeps resurgening so much, it may be because it’s an EqG comic. Unlike something like A Canterlot Wedding (in terms of inspiring fix/revenge fics, not in terms of quality), people are still discovering this comic. ACW was the season 2 finale and one of the most well known episodes of the show. Meanwhile, people are still getting into EqG, and even EqG fans tend to not have heard of the comic. People are still discovering it, it is fresh for many.
The large amount of ranting about them probably also draws attention to them. I see a lot of posts that spring up in different groups and blogs that give these stories tons of publicity. People get curious, especially if a story is featured, and it’s likely to attract people who enjoy these kind of stories. That starts it’s own chain reaction and feeds back into people discovering the comic.
There’s also a few extra things that may set people off, especially younger ones, in the comic. Sunset was pretty bad in the first movie (the demon thing could be argued to not be her in control like with Midnight and Gloriosa, but that’s not particularly relevant), but we see her still facing consequences for it in RR. She’s still an outsider in the main group, is despised by the school, and is afraid to stand up for herself. She spends the entire movie like that before the end, where things do start looking up for her. That’s the most time we’ve seen a character consistently on screen deal with consequences (and ones that don’t feel retconny, it actually feels like this has been going on since the first movie). Sunset had finally gotten her place, and not only that, she had earned it.
Then the comic hits. It undoes everything Sunset had done. Everyone is back to hating her over a frame job. They don’t give her the benefit of the doubt at any point or even really consider they might be wrong (they also do nothing to stop the spreading of the secrets...). After Sunset’s arc, especially after she thought it wasn’t her place to stand up for herself, this completely abrupt dropping and essentially public shaming may as well been a slap in the face. What’s worse is that this was essentially the third time this kind of shit happened. The first movie had them broken apart by texts and emails from their own phones and accounts (and they barely consider the same thing might’ve happened again...). RR they nearly tore themselves apart because, well Rainbow’s giant ego and Applejack needing to be a contrarian (sure it was actually more than that, but Rainbow’s behavior in RR stood out). And now the same thing happened again, they refused to talk and broke up after a frame job. It’s very easy to interpret this as Sunset constantly having to be on eggshells and how it the friendships can shatter from the slightest touch, creating a feeling of undoing everything Sunset did. It’s made worse by pointing towards the Rainbooms not learning their lesson yet again. And of course the ending would be another slap in the face, with the Rainbooms instantly forgiving the CMC after how they treated Sunset and didn’t have an apology. Sure the CMC got detention, but that was entirely off panel and no consequences were shown. They just skipped to the moral and to the ending panels without any real resolution or anything of the sort. I can see why the comic would piss off a lot of people so much.
Sorry about the rambly typing here, mobile is giving me some trouble here.
4821900
That requires making a lot of unconfirmed assumptions. We do know time travels differently between the two worlds (the director of EqG confirmed it, though we don’t know any specifics on how). We don’t know how old Twilight is (no confirmation on that, plus Lauren Faust made a post on how the mane six have the maturity level of 12-17 year olds). We also don’t know how old Sunset was when she left Celestia either (Forgotten Friendship muddles things up even further). Most importantly though, EqG presents Sunset as a teenager and treats her as one, there’s no reason to assume differently.
4845280
No need to be sorry, this is a good post. :) Thank you!
4845280
Tl;dr
4824633
It's been four months, but I was reading back through the comments and just needed to add
WISE MAN SAY
FORGIVENESS IS DIVINE
BUT NEVER PAY FULL PRICE FOR LATE PIZZA
I made a mistake and read this out of morbid curiosity.
It was not a good time.
Then I noticed the sequel was quite short. I decided to read it real quick because how bad could it really be?
Did you know that Sunset wields brass knuckles in the sequel? Because I know this now
5000222
you fool
5000321
Holy crap, so many Anon-a-Miss fics are off-shoots of that pile. It's unreal.
Also, I started the one with Sonata in Chapter 1 because I have no self-control. It's a fine start?
5010568
Or... or just not? c.c I dunno, what will come of this I wonder
5010609
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/529500685553893386/543976438169206814/unknown.png
But seriously. The first, like, six chapters were actually a decent start. Sunset completely closing herself off was handled reasonably well to start. There was potential for some good character developments there. It even could have kept the bathroom breakdown and subsequent hospital visit. But then it went off the rails
5010616
Yes, definitely.