Falling for All This Time · 1:07pm Sep 4th, 2018
Let’s talk about SunDagio for a bit. Depending on how exactly you define it, Lost in Paradise is somewhere between my second depiction of the pairing and my fifth.
Spoilers for Lost in Paradise follow. If you haven’t read that one yet, then I’d suggest going no further until you have.
Here’s some cute SunDagio, first:
So I’ve written a fair bit of SunDagio. Adagio is front and center in most of my stories, and Sunset often isn’t far away. There is no ship, in this fandom or otherwise, that I have fixated on so strongly as SunDagio. At one point, I read it voraciously.
Which makes sense to me. A lot of sense! My favorite Equestria Girls movie? Rainbow Rocks. My favorite characters in Rainbow Rocks? If you don’t know that, I can only assume this is the very first time you’ve heard of me. (Hi!)
But behind the three sirens, Sunset was pretty solidly fourth. Even now, when EQG gets her right (Forgotten Friendship, I’m looking at you), she’s one of my favorites.
And, y’know. Good Thing + Good Thing = Better Thing ∀ Things, so clearly SunDagio was Best Ship.
But in at least one of my stories, it’s the worst thing ever. In my favorites of my stories, Sunset sleeping with Adagio is the sign of a coming apocalypse of the heart.
But enough about the ship as a whole. I liked it—I really liked it. From pretty much the beginning of my time writing, I knew I was going to write SunDagio. It was only a matter of time.
So let’s talk about Lost in Paradise.
And let’s start that by talking about... Lost in Paradise. But, like, a different Lost in Paradise.
So, as one stage of my editor’s long-term plan to convert me into a metal addict, part of the writing process for this consisted of listening to a lot of Evanescence. And they’ve got a song called, you guessed it, Lost in Paradise, and it’s lovely.
Really, look at these lyrics and tell me they couldn’t be Sunset and Adagio singing to each other:
As much as I'd like the past not to exist
It still does
And as much as I'd like to feel like I belong here
I'm just as scared as you
Now, thing is, I actually didn’t like the idea of that being the title at first. Evanescence have another song called Tourniquet, which was what I originally really really liked. I felt like there was a parallel to be drawn between a tourniquet, which can be invaluable in some pinches but horribly dangerous if not removed eventually, and Sunset and Adagio’s relationship in this story.
But that brought up the worry of Tourniquet sounding too morbid and giving away the darker/sadder tone of the story too readily. I was always a bit remiss that I didn’t go with it, though.
Until, that is, I found a particularly lovely remark in a comment someone was kind enough to leave:
Meanwhile, the "paradise" of Sunset and Adagio living together calls back to the Siren insta-redemption fics that utterly flooded the site between 2014-2016, for purposes of easy shipping with the Rainboom of the author's choice. On a metafictional (and metafannish) level, this fic is a goddamn scalpel.
So, uh, first of all, I guess this is the moment where I thank forbloodysummer for having been right all along when it came to the title, and also thank Bookish Delight for helping me realize it.
But, anyway. That last sentence of the quoted paragraph in particular, I adore, because while I completely agree with it, that was never my plan.
I mean, the very first plan I had for this story, back when I was bouncing ideas for a contest entry off of a friend, involved Sunset and Adagio going back to Equestria, at which point it would turn out that Adagio turns into a sheep when she goes through the portal (She’s poofy and fluffy, so she’s totes a sheep. It’d be cute, and I said so, so that’s how it is). So that would’ve been super different.
And, as you can see, that’s not what happened. At least part of that idea, my friend turned into his own entry into the contest. Which would be worth a look, if Adagio being a sheep who lurrrrrves her darling cuddle buddy Sunset sounds at all appealing.
The story that Lost in Paradise turned into began with this exchange:
Seriously, that’s it. I just wanted to be, amidst a sea of Bacon Waifus and upbeat peddlers of Feelings Talk and Fluffy Feelings, that one idiot who decided to make Sunset an emotionally abusive kinda-antagonist, purely for the sake of it being a hard-as-fuck sell. The idea of this story being meta commentary didn’t occur to me until someone pointed it out.
But it is kind of an intriguing notion.
Let’s come back to SunDagio.
(Aren’t they adorable? 
)
This is the second time I’ve built a story at least partially out of not being satisfied with how the ship works for me. I’ve not really talked much about why, though, at least not out in the open, and my current favorite siren forum (Which you should totes join, by the way, if you haven’t already; lots of good stuff happens over there) doesn’t cover the pairing at all.
I should preface this by saying that this all comes from a starting premise of No Redemptions, Ever, at least where Adagio is concerned. Some people may disagree on that, and that’s fine, if you do, but for me, a large part of Adagio’s appeal is rooted in her villainous traits, and any story which discards those traits is doing her a disservice. She can be cute and huggable, I know (Look at all that hair!), but to me, any character growth for her has to make her sympathetic in spite of her being a bit of a bitch rather than making her sympathetic instead of making her a bit of a bitch.
This is where things start to go wrong, though.
In Lost in Paradise, the point is made that Sunset prefers to move on from her past instead of acknowledging that it’s a part of her. I think my favorite showing of this quality of hers in the Equestria Girls content itself is My Past is Not Today.
Which is fair, I think. Sunset has seen and felt for herself that throwing off her villainous past has brought her little but good things. Her past is one of mistakes, reckless decisions, loneliness, and, uh, all kinds of other less-than-fun things. Of course she wants to put all that behind her now that her life has taken such a different turn.
Adagio, though? Point me to a scene in Rainbow Rocks where she isn’t having the time of her life being evil.
The commonality of Sunset and Adagio being former villains is fantastic romance fuel... on the surface. But it starts to break down a bit when you dig a bit deeper into their former villainous states and realize that they were not really all that similar.
Now, I have more to say about this. There’s a facet of Adagio that I haven’t explored in any story I’ve published yet, and I don’t want to talk about it until it’s popped up in a story.
Because, as it turns out, there was no better way to put me off SunDagio than for me to try and write the long SunDagio story I’d always dreamed of writing.
So this blog is kind of a Part 1. When that other story comes out, I’m sure I’ll find more things to talk about, both about SunDagio and otherwise. I still like the pairing, don’t get me wrong. Or I want to like it, at the very least. But Lost in Paradise, I feel, outlines one of the big reasons I don’t think the pairing has a shot at a believably enduring happy ending.
It sounds like, between this blog, Tethered-Angel's short description, and the journalistic exposing of Sunset Shimmer's bestiality fetish, this contest has mostly been a tale of this 'forbloodysummer' character being the font of all wisdom. I certainly hope he or she doesn't let that go to his or her enlightenment-filled head.
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Speaking as an often-beleaguered collaborator of the person in question, I can tell you that the odds of praise not going to forbloodysummer’s head are rather slim. Bit of a diva, that one.
Really good to see the discussion of this out in the open
And it's strange, even though I was there for a lot of it, bits of it look very different from the other side!
I was thinking about this last night - I think Tourniquet would be the title of the story of the post-defeat Adagio romance with Sunset if she hadn't lost her memory, because it would reflect the battleground they remember coming from to get to where they are now. But it would still have the same limited shelf life of SunDagio in general, so the idea of it being a lifesaver which can become crippling if used for too long would still apply, I think?
I couldn't agree more! Might as well read any of the many, many, non-bitch characters in MLP if you want that other thing
I'm really glad you liked the song Lost in Paradise, it's so very pretty and it does fit the story really very well. I've had it in my head ever since it was mentioned as the story title
I am flattered that you would make that admission so publicly, and mention the siren group, too!
I guess I rather owe Bookish for making that comment on the story.
I hope this is a story SunDagio shippers will talk about for years to come, though, because I think it's one of the few that really deserve that status.
4931197 WTF?! Who is this?!
4931206 Rather slim like his or her supermodel-esque silhouette, I bet!
4931222 Not telling! But I can tell you who I'm definitely, totally, 100% NOT!!!
Oh god there's two of them.
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And they’re incredibly enamored with each other.
help
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Did much surprise you, apart from the bit where I didn’t mean this story to be as meta as it turned out?
I was kinda curious what you’d think of this, since you’ve heard pretty much every point here in private
I love this so mu--goddammit why do you have to say that you’re making me want to write more SunDagio
No, but seriously, I really like that. I can totally see Sunset being kind of a good influence on Adagio. Different viewpoints and all that, and I could see Sunset being good for the times when, like, Adagio’s completely fed up with her sisters and wants to scream about them for a few hours.
But you’re totally right, I don’t think that connection could last and I could see them having to either cut it off completely or at least dial back the intimacy of it after a while.
... Which actually makes me wonder if the way to make SunDagio work would be for it to be more of an on-and-off kinda thing. Like, they accept that their lifestyles are completely different and that they can’t feasibly stay together long-term, but still hook up now and then or something.
I think it’s that insight, more than anything else, that’s most shaped how I view Adagio and the writing thereof--not to say she can’t be nice, but between the immortality angle and the complexity of the inter-siren relationships, you’re blocking yourself off from a world of opportunity by absolving Adagio. There aren’t many other characters at all, I think, that can pull off sympathetic-but-villainous like she can. She’s in an odd place where she can be completely unrepentant and yet still rather admirably virtuous, what with the indomitable willpower and ambition and potential sisterly love she’s got going for her.
It is sooo pretty
Thanks for pointing it out to me! 
This story is, uh, kind of a weird one for me? I don’t know how obvious this was, but when I was writing it, just focusing on the events themselves and what they said about this story, I distinctly remember always being a bit underwhelmed by it. Not that I didn’t like it--I did, there’s at least a scene or two that I’m super happy/proud of.
But thinking about the whole thing more as a story that doubles as meta commentary just kinda made the whole thing seem more elegant to me
And it’s not that often that I’ve had reception change how I view my own story for the better, so it really just seemed like something that was worth drawing attention to 
Sadly, I suspect it’s a bit late for that? This is the kind of story I’d wished I could write a few years ago, and now I have to wonder what people would’ve thought of it back then when SunDagio was more of a thing than it seems to be now (Canon’s given us more and more Sci-Twi and not any Adagio at all, so I think I’m right in saying that SciSet/SunLight’s been pushing SunDagio out of the spotlight more and more?).