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Both FiM and EqG have featured a number of reformed baddies over the years, and while some have gone on to be beloved among fans, I think it's safe to say that the idea of redeemed villains is one of those things about 2010s fiction that divided people a fair bit. But if you had to pick just one antagonist that you felt was less deserving of a second chance than all the others, who would you choose, and why? 🤔
7437849
My choice would be between 'A Raging She-Demon, The Lord of Chaos and Cutie Mark Communist'
discord, solely because if they had been left alone, chrysalis, tirek, and cozy glow may have eventually found their way instead of discord chucking them into a doomsday scenario where equestria isn't gonna even want to consider those 3 having a shot at redemption
7437849
Discord, as much I like his character before season 8 and 9. Without him, Equestria wouldn't be nearly destroy by the doom trio
Sunset she gets no transition just immediately “I’m not bad guy anymore”
Hard to tell. A second chance would do a lot to a individual.
A third time would be a stretch perhaps...
7437849
Discord. Solely for the fact that he time and time again showed he hadn't changed a bit. Celestia should've been beat upside the head, for it all boils down to everything Discord did after Season 3, was her fault in the end.
The idea behind it wasn't bad. But boy did it fail miserably when we look at everything that happened after his release.
7437883
"Solely for the fact that he time and time again showed he hadn't changed a bit."
He definitely has changed from the Draconequus he was back in Season 2, Fluttershy definitely proved that.
7437849
I know it's being said a lot, but.....
DISCORD!
Lol jk, but really, I think they all both did and didn't to some degree.
I couldn't pick just one though I blame the show's writing over the characters themselves.
-Discord; only in the sense the writers rarely gave him any character development. They never really had him learn from his mistakes. It makes the whole "reformed" plot just an excuse to keep his voice actor around.
-Diamond Tiara: After all the crap she put the CMC through, the whole "she's bad because her mom's bad" came out as a cop-out rather than a legit reason. Especially with how she treated them in The Ponyville Chronicles and One Bad Apple.
- Garble, if you can consider his final appearance a "redemption". Like Diamond Tiara I consider his reasoning to be flimsy. Apparently he's sensitive and likes creating stuff and acts like a jerk so he won't get picked on. This was never even remotely hinted at in any of his previous appearances, plus he never owns up to what he's done and apologizes to Spike for all the crap he's put him through.
- Chancellor Neighsay in the sense that his redemption was rushed. I would've liked it if, after he realized he was wrong, went out on a little soul-searching then appeared in a later episode where everyone is initially hesitant towards him but he shows that he has changed and sincerely wants to help others, even nonponies.
Do you really need to ask?
It’s a draw between Starlight Glimmer and Discord. On one hand, Discord’s status as a Chaotic Neutral character means he can’t be properly reformed, even if the writers don’t want to acknowledge it. On the other, Starlight Glimmer should not have been redeemed for reasons too complex to explain in a brief sitting.
7437849 Okiedokie!
Firstly. Anyone who said Discord or Starlight is unfortunately wrong. I don't care if you dislike the characters or not, that's all fine and dandy, but the fact of the matter is that out of all the redeemed characters in the show, both of them spent more time in the show working to adapt and adjust to a non-villain lifestyle than basically every other evil character combined.
Like, actually. They might stumble and they might make mistakes, but Starlight spent 4 seasons struggling to overcome her amoral tendencies. Discord spent 5 (I'm not counting the two where he was barely trying). In that time there's a lot they do, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much, but at the end of the day, this is effort they made and that is, frankly, that. There are more reasons as well, but they're too complex to explain in a brief sitting.
There are a good few minor asshole villains that probably got a bit forced here and there (not every episode is going to be a winner!), but I'm not going to try to comb through which of those was too far. Instead I'm going to take aim at the fandom's favourite because it's about damn time these double-standards get called out.
Luuuuuuuunaaaaaaaa.
Look, I like Luna. She's rad. I dig her whole, uh, shouty schtick. But Luna/Nightmare Moon got redeemed literally by a friendship laser. There was nothing Nightmare Moon decided, thought, or did that even implied that she was either remorseful or at all interested in trying to become good, or any combination thereof. Out of all the villains, she is the one who literally got brainwashed back into being a cutesy little sister to Celestia, which Nightmare Moon never decided to do.
And look, I get it. It was the series premier. There wasn't the time, the opportunity, and all that stuff to really work in a thorough redemption arc or even really foreshadow through Nightmare's actions that she could be redeemed. But this is where we are today. Nightmare Moon is the most deus-ex'd redemption of the show, and there's a reason why hundreds of fanfictions take aim at portraying Luna as being remorseful and tortured because this was never really approached in the show until quite late, and even then only half-heartedly.
Fight me.
7437849 You're missing the obvious: Princess Luna.
She engaged in revolt against the Crown, assaulted Princess Celestia, attacked innocent ponies, stole the most powerful artifact in Equestrian history, had *zero* remorse until she was defeated, and then was immediately brought back into the Equestrian government and placed in control of half of the celestial bodies. No penalties, no fines, no prison (other than her previous stint in the Lunar hotel), just force of eternal darkness and destruction one minute, sitting on the throne in a power-sharing arrangement with the only Princess Equestria had known for a thousand years the next.
7437849
Dr Caballeron: Oh where do I start with this guy? On let's start how DUMB Fluttershy was believing him! I wished that Daring Doubt would have ended with him ditching Fluttershy after getting his hooves on the treasure. Maybe Fluttershy learns how you can't trust everything you read. Or Caballeron gives up the treasure to save Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Daring from Ahuizotl. He does because Fluttershy was genuinely kind to him and he regrets lying to her. Rainbow and Daring aren't ready to trust him yet but Fluttershy forgives him.
Ahuizotl: Really writers? Really? You expect us to believe that Ahuizotl was "protecting the jungle" the whole time? Especially after what took place in Daring Don't? And I get what they wanted to go for here. Hearing both sides of the story is a very important lesson....and as much I hate giving this episode any form of praise, I gotta give them credit for that. But the execution is just, just why? It required an @$$ pull retcon to even "work." And speaking of @$$pulls....
Stygian: Stygian is a petulant brat! And Yes it was clear the intention of the episode was that both he and the Pillars were wrong. But much like Daring Doubt the execution was awful! Stygian went behind their backs and stole from them. He brought it on himself! But I think this explains all of my problems with this brat than I ever could.
Stygian. Fuck that guy. Like wtf was that whole episode. You where mean to me so I become big bad evil and enter a long as time of us all being trapped in a pocket dimension? Then y’all are just like “oh, sorry Robin, Batman should’ve said your name more” and suddenly we’re good? Nah.
7437898
Diamond Tiara never said another word in the whole series after "Crusaders of the Lost Mark." That is one thing I despise about that episode (it ruined the CMC for the most part anyway....should have been a season 9 episode), she and Silver Spoon are basically relegated to being background characters, background characters that rarely even show up. I suppose throwing her into the void of irrelevance was as close as we got to punishing her for everything she had done over the years.
I honestly don't think he ever was reformed. He simply admitted to writing poetry and said his reason for picking on Spike was so he wouldn't get made fun of. That is hardly a redemption, just a way to make him look not so bad before throwing him into the void of irrelevant characters.
Agreed and how the hell Fluttershy could just forgive him the way she did for what he did in the end is ridiculous, well I'd say how all of them seemed to....and it bothers me a lot that in that train wreck known as "The Last Problem" that it appears as though they are married. He should have been put next to the Legion of Doom for the shit he pulled, not allowed to aid Celestia and Luna in turning them to stone.
I’m going to name one who people often argue should have been redeemed.
Cozy Glow.
Yeah, I said it, now hear me out. A lot of people point to the fact that she’s a child as a reason that she shouldn’t have been punished the same way as Tirik and Chrysalis at the end of Season 9, and I get the argument on an emotional level. We don’t treat children the same as adults, ever, and for good reason. Mainly because children are incapable of possessing mens rea, or criminal intent. In stark contrast Cozy Glow knows exactly what she is doing when she tries to drain magic FROM THE ENTIRE WORLD into the void. She clearly demonstrated that she knows exactly what this means for everyone and everything in Equestria and beyond, knows how many will be hurt (or killed, though the show doesn’t say it explicitly) and knowing this, proceeds to do it anyway, counting on the devastation that will happen to overthrow the Princesses and start her own empire.
Regardless of her age, these are not the actions of a child. Cozy Glow came way too close to dooming countless creatures to horrible fates because she wanted power. No. No, no, no. I don’t want to see her redeemed, I want her trapped in stone or locked up in a dungeon under a mountain. Even the show writers recognized that she was beyond redeeming and didn’t even offer her a chance at redemption, which, in my opinion, was the right call.
Garble
7437984
If that’s what to tell yourself to stay happy, more power to you.
And a little life lesson. Just saying someone is wrong does not make them wrong. You need to prove that they’re wrong and provide hard evidence that invalidates their analyses to do that.
7438138
I'm getting deja vu.
Have you two done this before?
7438162
*shrug*
Babs Seed should not have been reformed, especially for as little as a role she played. She bullied the CMC without Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon watching, and seemed not to be feeling bad about it while actually doing it.
Ahuizotl was perhaps the biggest mistake in that regard, for the continuity and logical errors in that regard in the episode in general (for one thing, aside from motivations not making sense, Daring Do lacked "nopony in this area of Equestria knows I'm a real pony" since S7 and Rainbow Dash knew that, and the whole "ruin Daring Do's reputation" made no sense), as was Garble.
Spike, who wasn't exactly one to refrain from questioning the realism aspect of the fantasies shown, didn't question the realism or likelihood of Garble trying to murder Starlight in Twilight's fantasy for the hell of it, only her ability or lack thereof in surviving that situation, which is... an ultimate low vote of confidence on their parts, and Garble was rather sociopathic in general; he was the only one that wanted to pillage and burn Equestria, as Dragon Lord, showed some level of manipulative nature towards Spike in his debut, aside from wanting to smash an egg for kicks.
7437984
Also worth mentioning, Luna's backstory at face value perhaps rivals Starlight's in its depth, or the lack thereof (also Starlight's biggest flaw as a character, however much I like her). She grew bitter because... ponies slept through the night, so she wanted to plunge the world into eternal night, and tried to kill her sister pre-banishment after souping herself up on darkness (the show never hinted via dialogue that she had another entity influencing this). Celestia's personality clashing with hers, perhaps her being more of a jerk back then was never said to have been a factor, either.
She was also, sadly, kind of a wasted villain for how little she got to do.
I'd also say that Sunset Shimmer was not... exactly good in its execution of "she reformed at the end of the first movie," because her only redeeming quality before going full corrupt was letting Spike go because "I'm not a monster," and she was pretty... lackluster as a villain, as the Alpha Bitch, given how petty all of it was for the lack of power she seemed to have. Not even against her redeeming on principle, or being a villain, it's just... disappointing in the sense of "this is how they dealt with a character that was a rogue magical prodigy."
7437849
"Deserving" is kind of tricky... honestly, it would probably be easier to name the ones who did.
But I will nominate Ahuizotl for the bonus prize of the show somehow trying to retcon that he wasn't even a villain in the first place... which might actually have been a really cool concept if it was possible to pull off, but there was just too much evidence against.
7437984
I wouldn't be too surprised if part of the reason Luna's reformation is so abrupt is that the initial two-parter was clearly based on Return to Midnight Castle including blasting Tirac with a rainbow when he was trying to bring never ending night, but in the original, this destroys him. I could easily see them changing it to not have her die, but not really going all in on filling in the blanks.
Luna has been beating up on herself about it enough to have created the Tantabus.
I do find how much of Nightmare Moon was Luna confusing, and I wish they'd elaborated more on it.
I also find the change between Nightmare Moon, Season 1 Luna, and later Luna rather confusing, and would have liked more on that subject, and more Luna in general... (I could speculate that the first Luna was Luna with all the Nightmare Moon bits walled off, and that she gradually reintegrated most of that without becoming Nightmare Moon again or something.)
--Sweetie Belle
7437849 For FiM it's got to go to Ahuizotl and Garble. Ahuizotl comes completely out of nowhere, there is no hint he was ever not a villain before and the attempted retcon with him makes zero sense. I don't know what they were thinking when they thought of if. And for Garble, well his "excuse" is garbage because he willingly hung around the other teenage dragons and willingly demonstrated a desire to hurt others for no reason other than because he could. Spike even saved his life once, and Garble not only didn't return the favor but tried to take advantage of Spike's concern for his friends just to start a fight.
Dr. Caballeron is pretty bad, but I could see it working if they had gone about it better. The big detail is we don't know exactly how his offer to team up with Daring Do went down, and given how cold Daring was to the idea of a partner before "Daring Don't" it's entirely possible that Daring rejected Caballeron and in the process drove Caballeron to oppose her.
Discord would've been fine and dandy if not for that completely idiotic twist of him being Grogar in Season 9. It didn't need to be there and it singlehandedly destroyed his redemption arc by having him do something that didn't need to be done. Same goes for Trixie if they had ever bothered to give her a role after "No Second Prances" beyond just always fighting with Starlight Glimmer and more often than not acting like a toxic friend who used Starlight's friendship as an excuse to get away with bad behavior.
And for EQG, the honor goes without question to Vignette Valencia. Juniper Montage was insufferable, but she was never a threat to anyone at any point. Vignette though, she was a complete control freak who bossed others around and just in general acted like the worst boss you could ever work for. And then she was willingly to abuse the powers she obtained to get rid of anyone who wasn't doing exactly what she wanted, and would've committed manslaughter had the Rainbooms not stopped her. But she still got what she wanted and thus was "redeemed" when she should've been ousted and perhaps even arrested.
7438203 The Tantabus I feel was a bit of a 'too little too late' thing. Also it doesn't really change how quickly the redemption happened in the premier, without really any warning.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hold this against the show. I think the premier has nice symmetry and it does a lot of other things very well, so it feels wrong to overly criticise it for the one thing that you'd kind of need a bit of hindsight to know for sure. But it is still where we are today.
7438178
I mean... yes, that's her deal. A bit oversimplified, sure, but that's pretty much her backstory. I'm not entirely sure how that relates to her redemption, though.
In both Starlight and Luna's cases, we see examples of characters who clearly want something but for whatever reason don't know how to get it. In my blog I assert that primarily Starlight's desire is control, which is the root motivation behind her trying to control Cutie-Marks, enforce her will on a village, and lash out at ponies who want to take her control away. In Luna's case, this is implied to be more of an attention thing, but I don't see why either motivation is any more or less valid. When it comes to making mistakes, the whole point is that it's wrong, and both characters made wrong decisions. The whole point is that their rationale for it is going to be probably pretty flawed; that's what makes them wrong.
The point of redemption is that they're trying to make things right again. The main difference to me when it comes to assessing the validity of their redemptions in-story (although it's at this point that I must confess I find the term redemption to be very reductive) is whether they take any steps to lead to their change in behaviour, preferably non retroactively. It's this area that NMM stands out, as in the two episodes we see her in, she seems pretty into it and generally unrepentive, whereas Starlight in the s5 finale (as much as I have problems with that finale) shows emotional conflict and makes the choice to listen to Twilight, and Discord similarly puts the effort in to agree to try and get along.
7438138
It's not often you see someone burn themselves.
7438506
No kidding. At least everyone keeps some ointment on hand for the poor saps.
7438549
I was not referring to Haphazred.
7438610
Never would’ve guessed.
Neighsay easily, maybe Caballeron. But of the major ones to be redeemed (don't know if i should count Neighsay or not) then i would go with Sunset and Luna. I want them to be redeemed mind you, just felt it was too fast and too sudden of a change of heart, especially on Luna's part. That's why i felt that their redemption was weak and mostly bad for their characters.
Ah, the changelins too. They didn't deserved their redemption at all, maybe Thorax did, but that's him as an individual. The rest of them? They enjoyed their conquests and invasions as much as Chrysalis did; they enjoyed making fun of the ponies, enjoyed making them despair and hunger is not a fair excuse for all of this (see Thorax's example). The show just rules Chrysalis out as the big bad changeling when it didn't change the fact that the overwhelming majority of them were bad. It's even worse when they simply push Chrysalis under the bus to get on Equestria's good side and just accept Thorax as their leader(?) without question.
Now, Discord do deserves his redemption. He worked hard for it, don't know why many people are mentioning him at all. But he deserves a kick to the balls too... maybe two kicks. They let him off the hook too easily when he screws up bad time, but that's his personality. He is an assole afterall.
Also, i think they should have at least tried to redeem Cozy Glow at s8 finale. I don't know which part of the whole "let's throw a kid into Tartarus" seemed like a good idea. She got into the school with the wrong idea about friendship since the beggining and instead of doing what a teacher is supposed to do and help Cozy learn about friendship, they just "she is just a bad apple, let's Tartarus the fuck out of her and not worry about ruining her life". It's the mane6+gang 's fault that Cozy turned into a complete psicho with an unhealthy bloodlust.
7438329
...Slight apologies, that part really didn't have anything to do with redemption in and of itself, nor was it really meant to. It was tangentially related in that it's been a common talking point of Starlight, her backstory, but Luna often gets a pass in that regard, is allowed to have others take it as something other than face value, while the other... doesn't, in their eyes.
Either way, there's a difference between "backstory justifies," and "backstory explains," and even MLP I think leans on the latter... usually. "Tragic backstories" are ultimately optional for reforming characters, in the end. Starlight didn't exactly get one before she tried to get Chrysalis to reform; they're largely used as a tool to assist in reaching them, when they do show up.
For what it's worth, S5 finale Starlight seemed to be of the opinion that it's an explanation, not a justification, with her "there's no excuse for what I've done" spiel near the end, in any case.
7438328
As for the Tantabus... well, the impact of that was itself lessened by the fact that we didn't exactly see Nightmare Moon do much at all, taking it as is in S4, so her guilt felt kinda overblown to some.
7438838
The Tantabus problem, in my own opinion, has always been that it comes after Luna has been laserbeamed. We see her displaying regret, doubts, the belief she needs to make amends in some way, even by suffering, for her actions...
...And it's completely worthless. The Tantabus is something laserbeamed Luna does. The Luna who has been booped to be regretful and apologetic for her actions. The Luna who got the fast track to forgiveness.
Would the Luna who didn't get laserbeamed feel such regret? We can't know. Most probably, not.
7438855
I tend to go with "her regretting what she'd become is why she was turned back instead of mooned this time". A bit of a cheat, but there is some support for it in the clearly parallel case of Sunset Shimmer.
And the Tantabus is about guilt in the emotional sense, which is only loosely related to actual culpability.
7438855
What I end up wondering is whether what happened that caused her to form the Tantabus had happened before. Like maybe she'd been shoving all her resentment of her sister and the ponies that were rejecting her into the dream realm, it formed a monster like the Tantabus, and that took her over and turned her into Nightmare Moon?
Misty Nightmare Moon:
Tantabus:
Just speculation, but I think it'd be interesting...
--Sweetie Belle
7438992
Yes, I've had similar speculations. As well as the possibility that, her contributions overlooked, she created an ultimate Nightmare that she could defeat flashily and win acclaim - but it backfired, with her being seen as a failiure for letting it rampage, and so when she actually went to face it she lost.
7438992
I mean, I don't think you'd be wrong to think something along the lines of that is very plausible; Luna did, after all, seem to absorb the Tantabus back into herself (not destroy it) after it corresponded to her emotions, and there is at least one other case of magically bottling anger up going kinda poorly (All Bottled Up), so Luna being an alicorn probably couldn't have helped if something like that were indeed the case, for the potency involved with bottling up emotions.
7437992
Well, Luna was not redeemed. She was brainwashed, or, if NMM is something separate, freed from posession. Who she is after defeat is not who she was as NMM, and it is NMM who acted while Luna only allowed this to happen by being sad, angry and envious.
7437849
Discord. Celestia said that his magic can be helpful, but the only time this overpowered idiot helped to fix what was not his own fault he did this WITHOUT MAGIC. All the other times he only endangered people for the sake of some friendship lesson and got away either because of this excuse, or because his plan backfired and he helped to save the day. Or just because he was a friend, despite betrayal. Nobody cared even when he freed villains who nearly destroyed Equestia TO TEACH A SINGLE PONY. What about some ponies probably buried in ruins when Tirek blew up Canterlot castle? The princesses are just stupid and irresponsible. And not only that, but it is straight declared in "Discordant Harmony" that he would not never, ever change because of MAGIC which makes him disappear otherwise.
It is fine to teach tolerate some jerkass behaviour because it is nature, but not because magic and not if his antics are this disastrous.
7440873 Ah ha! I was waiting for someone to say that Nightmare Moon was an entity separate from Luna!
Do you have any idea how excited I've been for this?
There are two angles to look at here. The first is that, whilst possible, it's not really something the show itself delves into. The comics for sure describe the Nightmare Force as a separate entity that then goes onto possess Rarity, but as a lot of other threads go into, the comics don't always line up with canon, and for sure, anyone who never read the comics would only have the show to work with. In the show, it's never alluded to that Nightmare Moon is a separate entity; just an alter ego or the product of a warped mind. And it does seem a little strange to me that if the show had 'the Nightmare Force possessed Luna' in its back pocket and never actually used it.
Moreover, if she was possessed, she's also at least somewhat complicit in this. We see through flashback that Luna is clearly incensed prior to her transformation; the things that made her angry and resentful are still there regardless of the Nightmare Force, and she enabled it to run amok. At its worst she let it happen, at best it was a mistake that got out of control (and speaking of double standards, how often do we see people get angry at Discord's mistake, with potentially similar outcomes, but not once turn their ire on Luna, who didn't even have the benefit of trying to do something right?)
The second angle is a narrative one. Even if Luna is being possessed by an external force, it strikes me as decidedly weak that it was through a rainbow laser that she got 'cured'. Across vast amounts of stories, characters being possessed show at least evidence of trying to resist their possession. It's also weak to not address it until four seasons later. Contrast that with Starlight and Discord, and they appear, sometimes multiple times after they switch sides, clearly showing a struggle to adapt. I would argue that on a story level, this is a stronger, more meaningful approach.
It's easy to say that a character was 'a different person' at a different time in the story. I mean, yeah. Their characters evolve. The Starlight we see in Our Town is not the one we see at the end of the show, either. Discord may still be a piece of shit, but he's also clearly a more caring individual that, once, would never have even considered even trying to do anything nice for anyone. The thing that makes a difference is the process they take, and in this instance, Luna's process was still, ultimately, getting beamed by a friendship laser.
So yeah. Still pretty weak as far as I'm concerned. But hot diggety shit is she charming, and I shit you not Tabitha makes most characters sound super likeable.
7438855 One theory I had which I (still) kind of like is that the Tantabus is the remnants of the 'original' Luna who went mad and became Nightmare Moon. I think this is a pretty grim theory.
I think it makes for a pretty meaningful twist if the Luna we generally encounter in the show is, essentially, just a sort of brainwashed clone, and the Tantabus is the original trying to lash out at the imposter through dreams. I think this probably tracks, as I can imagine that in the olde days Luna probably would have used her ability to affect dreams to make nightmares (hence the name Nightmare Moon), either to wake ponies up to see the night sky or to get them to at least notice her, or for revenge or whatever.
I think it's also pretty poignant that the original Luna felt abandoned and ignored by everyone, even her own sister, and now, unbeknownst to everyone, they still are until she's just a mindless, brainless entity floating in dreams until she finally gets put down by a cuter, more amicable replacement. Going down not with a roar, but a whimper, and a shadow of her former self.
I think it's neat. Pure headcannon tho!
7440880
Boy, that's grim and dark... I love it!
It would bring up, if in a story, the question of when an individual is 'brainwashed' what exactly the brainwashing is, who the new person is, who the old, what's the difference between them, what are these identities composed of and what makes the difference between them, and which of the two has, if that's how we would put it, right to exist. In this alternative interpretation, is the differential between the old and the new a set of desires? A moral code? A complete identity or simply the lack of a heavily built up grudge? It's a very fascinating topic to explore, and to do so with a character who dreamwalks? Who has the potential to talk to the deeper components of their psyche? Mmmnnn, delicious!
Similarly, would be fascinating to explore the Tantabus under that. Is it a complete form, the decaying fragments, or perhaps the discarded desires or grudge that the laser seared off? What are the nightmares that it gives to Luna? Are they truly nightmares or does it attempt to go back in where it belongs? Does it perhaps not give her nightmares at all but simply tries to remind her what she used to want, a perspective that is nightmaring to the new brainwashed Luna? Does it try to build up the grudge again or it presents her with a morality she no longer abides and it terrifies her? Is the nightmares it gives to all other ponies simply its old hate manifesting and totes different from what Luna experiences in terms of desired outcome?
And, you know, something curious that you can tie into this. The brandly new brainwashed Luna was very simple. Pale colors, small, etc. But in her next appearance, she is bigger, and her mane runs amok with stars. Is that her coming into her power again, or has she started using the Tantabus and at the very least it managed to bring up her old craving for attention? What would happen if the Tantabus never ran wild and she kept using it as she designed it to? Quite a good theme for how punishment and guilt don't bring positive change but rebirth what made them, huh? She'd be fucked during that telling, of course, but it's a neat exploration.
7440878
Anyway it does nothing to the fact that Luna was not talked into friendship, but changed by magic. The question is, however, why only her but not others who got rainbow laser in their face?
7440895
Yes, that's... sort of my point.
The question of why it only seems to be viable on Luna isn't really relevant to the topic of a deserved redemption, but there are theories and analyses on how the elements work, why they might turn Discord to stone but appear to turn the clock back on Luna, or alternatively boot her to the moon. They're generally a bit speculative, since the show doesn't really come and explicitly tell us their exact mechanics, and moreover they might even be evolving throughout the show (their shape changes as early as the second episode, and later they get absorbed into trees and... stuff. They're hard to pin down, basically, even if they have some coherency). It's a bit tangential, so I won't go into it too much here, but it's something that can be explored and explained to a degree.
In the end it doesn't really matter much; at the end of the day, Luna still gets 'redeemed' via laser, which pretty much no matter how you slice it is weaker than the other two 'major' reformations. Which makes sense, really, considering she was the first and kind of the prototype redemption of the show, but still, it strikes me as somewhat egregious that her rushed, deus-ex redemption hardly ever gets called into question compared to the comparatively stronger, more earned reformations of two nuanced and complicated characters.
7440888 I think there's a lot that could be cool to explore with this sort of concept.
To be fair I actually made a mistake; in the end the Tantabus is re-absorbed into Luna (I was under the impression she exploded or something), so it's possible that following this theory that the original and the new one become like, a third Luna that's a mix of the two. Which would be weird, but kinda fun. I'd dig it.
It'd add another dimension onto Celestia and Luna's relationship, because now there are two of them, and it'd probably be a big test to find a way to love them equally... especially considering one went mad with attention-deficiency that Celestia blasted to the moon and the other is a brainwashed clone. Like, that'd be a messed up family reunion for everyone involved.
7440912
Immensely apropos when considering that many moon gods/goddesses in both mythology and media have a conflicting duality. I believe it would make for a better story than the interpretation of 'one is real Luna, the other is her evil side," that's going on. It's an evolving arc that keeps feeding on what went before and make it matter.
7440900
Harmony shows coherency since S5 or S8 if you want the ultimate proof like tha tghost Twilight projected by the Tree. Also it has sort of foresight since the friendhip missions are given in "go there and do whatever you want" fashion. So we are probably walking into territory of God and Discord with his stupid friendship lessons might be part of the plan while NMM was needed only to give Elements to Mane 6.
And I still think that Luna is out of the question since she deserved redemption exactly as little as she got (forced by magic). Other examples are more disproportionate.
7440942
Based on what?
She tried to plunge the world into eternal night and rule as a tyrant because she felt ostracised and unappreciated. And we know she'd have done it, too, because we see her succeed in one of the alternate timelines, and she didn't exactly look very remorseful about her success.
So based on what is she more worthy than characters who put more effort into changing than she ever did as Nightmare Moon? What has she done? Because it doesn't look great to me whichever way you slice it. After she gets laserbeamed, like, it doesn't matter. As Crimmar noted earlier, by that point she's already been turned back into cute lil' sister Luna, but we have no way of knowing whether that's what she wanted for herself, similarly to how we can assume Discord didn't want to get turned into stone by the elements.
So, yeah. Back that statement up, pls.
7440880
Meaningful, maybe, but I think it kind of goes a bit too far against the spirit? (What TV Tropes used to call a Poison Oak Epileptic Tree, before they realised nobody knew what that meant - a theory so cruel it taints the original work.) Besides, if the Elements worked that way, what of Discord and Tirek - are they sexist or something?
7440900
Partly because she doesn't show any significant recidivism, which means it's undeniably effective. Partly because it's hard to find flaws in such a simple process, while "talking refornations" are much more subject to analysis and nitpicking (especially due to replicability). And probably partly because Luna was reformed in the same story she was introduced (even if we didn't really get to know her until later) so pretty much no-one developed an attatchment to her as a villain.