duidamasterXD

I've seen some posts (accurately) pointing out that pre-reformation Starlight and Sunset were as different as night and day. This is true, but Starlight and Sunset both became extremely different from their orignal selves after joining team good-guy, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that they're quite similar in their current states. This is likely intentional. I'd guess Starlight's introduction, reformation and addition to the main cast was a response to how well-received Sunny was.

That said, it might just be too early to judge. It took Sunset until Friendship Games to reveal that she still has a prickly side that comes out under the right circumstances. Perhaps we'll see more of Starlight 1.0's characteristics in future episodes. I certainly hope we will.

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Music Chart Fan made an excellent point about how Sunset had to earn her forgiveness, where Starlight was let off the hook in the blink of an eye. This is true, though it's more of a difference in how the characters are treated by others than a difference in the characters themselves.

Neutral Good

Boy

I've seen a lot of posts like "AJ is a stereotype because she's a cowgirl, RD is a stereotype because she's a tomboy, Rarity is a stereotype because she likes to look good, etc."

If we're defining a stereotypical character that broadly, I struggle to think of a character (in MLP at least) who isn't one.

Celestia seems to be pretty into the whole "Twilight u alone must save teh day!" thing, even though Twily has a positively dreadful track record of accomplishing things solo. And Twilight still always seems to listen to her for some reason . Feels like her development shoots back to the beginning of the series each time Celestia opens her mouth.

But hey, they'd probably struggle to fill two-twenty minute episodes (let alone full movies) without having Twilight running around alone and panicking for much of that time . This is why I don't care for most of the plot episodes.

Chaotic Neutral

Get a less evil avvie and we'll talk

Every main character of anything ever will sound like a Mary Sue if you describe them out of context. Being a main character tends to go hand in hand with improbable origin stories and unlikely accomplishments.

I think what really determines a Mary Sue is how other characters react to the Sue. If the character is treated like the center of the universe and characters are judged by how much they like or dislike the character, and seemingly have little else going on in their lives unconnected to the character, then the character is a Sue. If the character is exactly the same, but they're surrounded by people who don't treat them like God's gift to humanity, then they might not be a Sue. I really don't like the whole mindset of "This character has (insert character flaws here) so they aren't a Sue." mainly because it's very common for people to tack minor character flaws onto ridiculous characters to avoid criticism. Lots of Sues are awkward, clumsy, etc, for example.

Overall, I'd say Twilight isn't a Sue. She comes close to feeling like the center of the Pony-verse sometimes ( "My prodigious intelligence, immense magical talent, unique magical wings, swanky giant castle, and the fact that I was set apart by the Elements of Harmony as more special than all of my friends from the beginning REALLY doesn't make me more special than anybody else . " ) but her friends are written well enough, and have enough going on that's unrelated to Twilight, to keep her from coming off this way.

A ) Not always in first place, at the Equestria Games qualifier she only just made the qualification for Ponyville and came second by minutes after Cloudsdale.

Seconds, really. If I were to draw any conclusions from that race, the fact that Cloudsdale only won by a nose should indicate that RD would smoke any of the Bolts one on one.

We can talk about whether it negatively impacts the show or not, but I'm not gonna deny that RD has consistently rekt Spitfire and pals in terms of both athleticism and integrity .

For Rainbow Dash to show off her superior skills, loyalty and moral highground, the wonderbolts have to be portrayed as incompetant, dishonest, wreckless and backstabbing.

I agree with this, although as a disclaimer, the Bolts look fine as an organization if you disregard Rainbow Falls as I prefer to. Spitfire didn't really do anything all that bad in WA, and Wind Rider's actions don't really reflect poorly on the group as a whole.

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This is a pretty normal thing in kids' media, though. Not really any different from Harry beating Voldy instead of hiding behind Dumbledore, or Aang and pals beating up the Fire Nation instead of leaving it to somebody else. Don't really have a huge problem with it, though I do really wish they'd give Celestia some screentime

All this hate for Tanks for the Memories and What About Discord tho

For my least faves, in no particular order:

Appleoosa's Most Wanted, for being incredibly depressing and having little in the way of redeeming features.

Princess Spike, because it was pretty clear where the episode was headed after only a few minutes. This isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but waiting twenty minutes for everything to blow up in Spike's face wasn't terribly fun.

Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep. This episode should've been depressing, and it sort of was, but all the memes and randomness in the second half of the episode threw the tone way out of whack. Not opposed to pandering and silliness in general, but there's a time and a place for it. The climax of an episode dealing with self-loathing/self-harm is... not the time or place.

Canterlot Boutique, which isn't even a bad episode. It just felt like a less-good remake of Suited for Success.

The Hooffields and the McColts, for the same reasons Stellafera wrote about above.

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For me, blandness is the cardinal sin an episode can commit. There're other highly flawed episodes (Brotherhooves Social, Make New Friends But Keep Discord, Tanks for the Memories, probably others) that I didn't mention, because they had some kind of redeeming feature that ultimately made me glad I watched em. I'm willing to overlook any number of flaws so long as my verdict at the end of the episode isn't "I want those twenty minutes of my life back."

Out of these two, I'll go with Rarara. As usual, anybody I wanted to win got dumped out long ago

Hmm. In all seriousness...

 

*spoilered for those who might not have seen it yet*

 

 

I think they kind of undid some of the awesomeness of the finale by returning Gruncle Stan's memory (which should really have brought Bill back too, if you think about it). I guess Disney needed a happy ending, but I think bittersweet (a Gruncle Stan who saved the world, but had to give up his memories of the summer to do so) would have been a bitter better way to finish it.

 

 

I agree, but there's at least one possible explanation

With that said,

Another factor is the sheer volume of these stories. When it comes to pone fic, there are heaps of stories pairing characters up with (largely) poorly-written original characters, and finding the good ones (if they exist) is a matter of separating wheat from a mountain of chaff. While that statement is largely true for fanfic in general, it's especially true for stories that rely on us believing that six characters we've come to love all have a thing for the same person.

Also, writing a convincing and enjoyable romance between a blank slate character and a /single/ mane six character is a hard enough thing to do. Trying to do that for six at once runs a large risk of making the whole thing feel shallow.

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As for the harem genre in animu, it's lost favor among many because it often feels pointless. At the end, the main person almost always picks one of the cast to end up with, which ends up angering the large potion of the audience who preferred other characters.

Kingdom Hearts, Dream Drop Distance. No thanks. My life was complicated enough already

BUT WAIT
 

 
the forum remembers that section's rightful leader . Soon... soon the members will reclaim the other sections from the staff, and then we'll be able to have some real fun around here

I have a hard time separating Luna's and Sunset's reformations, as Sunset's was clearly written to mirror the one we observed in the pilot episodes. If anything, I give Sunset's props for having much better follow up. I'll take Rainbow Rocks and Friendship Games over Luna Eclipsed and DPDoMS? any day of the week.

Based on their overall reformations, I put Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, just narrowly edging out Trixie. DT & SS were mostly one-note characters in all but one of their episodes ("Twilight Time" made them more fame-obsessed than outright bullies), and they didn't get a character arc until the absolute last episode. Diamond Tiara was given an even more one-note caricature for a mother to explain why she was a bully in order to shift responsibility from her as a character, and to this point neither she nor Silver Spoon have appeared in any subsequent episodes.

I am quite curious to see what they'll do with these two in future episodes, if anything. They were both extremely one-note before they became nice, so there's really not a whole lot of character for them to build off of. I suppose they could do a thing with DT trying to be a leader (since she does seem to have a thing for being in charge) without being a total megalomaniac, but I have a hunch that we won't be seeing much of either of them from now on.

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As for an answer to the thread's question, I thought Starlight's was weaksauce. It's not really inherently better or worse than Sunset's or Discord's were, initially, but I'll label it the worst by default until they manage to sell me on Starlight as a good guy.

My fave is too cool to limit herself to just one favorite color . I think her old Hot Minute video even had her trying to answer with "rainbow".

Between that IDW comic about Shining and Cadance meeting, as well as little thingies in Magical Mystery Cure and TOWPPK, I'd say Shining's character has an excellent foundation to build off of. Doubt they'll ever give either of Cadance or SA a huge amount of focus, but I'd be down for seeing them struggling to learn how to parent.

Best - Diamond Tiara and Gilda. Agree that they were a tad rushed in some parts(but nowhere near the degree of all the others), they were still well done, with really good explanations of their past behaviors. On top of that they were simple bullies rather than gods/tyrants, so they were more believable. I think Gilda's edges out DT though because her early friendship with RD made it easier to buy

 

Runner up would be both Discord and Sunset Shimmer, both of them had to take a while to sit in for them to work(in Sunset's case, her initial reformation was pretty bad but Rainbow Rocks more than made up for it)

 

Worst - Starlight Glimmer, no question. It actually managed to destroy what was arguably time the best villain in the show at the time. Her backstory makes her motivations and every action she made up to that point absolutely embarrassingly bad, and seeing her forgiven for everything she did in a 2 minute montage singing about friendship was also painful to sit through. To this day I still think that entire sequence was one, if not, the lowest point in the show

Basically all of this. I dock DT's points because she was never so much as hinted to have any redeeming or sympathetic qualities before her episode, but I liked that much of the episode focused on her wanting to change, and only managing to do so at the very end. It's something I really want to see more often.

Discord's and Sunset's were blah initially, but made great by how they were handled after the fact. Sunset still had to deal with the fallout from her actions, and in Friendship Games showed that she still has a bit of an angry, snippy side to her that comes out under pressure. And Discord stole the show in Twilight's Kingdom by (realistically) relapsing, and then reforming in a more satisfying way. Some don't like that he's still a bit of a butt even now, but a Discord who isn't at least a little trolly and pranksterly sounds boring, and isn't really something I'm in a hurry to see.

It remains to be seen whether Starlight's will also will be made good by future episodes.

Dash's gushing is so damn adorable in this gif . What a freaking sappy dork . I also like that her reaction to the reveal was more one of pleasant surprise than shock.

8039. One of the last of the 4-digiters.

What do these numbers mean anyway?

It measures what order people joined the forum in. So if your user number is 30000, for example, it means your account was the 30000th account created.

EvAbridged (Neon Genesis Evangelion) and Dangan Ronpa Abridged Thing are also quite good, in addition to the things already mentioned. Shame the latter's been discontinued.

I found Twilight's Kingdom to be pretty blah barring Discord's relapse + second redemption. That part was great, as it addressed lingering concerns about the hastiness of his original reformation and showed how whether good or bad, he's become the kind of person who wants somebody to be good or bad with. His part of the story was very human. Overall the episode was solid, but I found the parts focusing on Twilight (so most of the episode) less interesting in comparison.

Might just need a rewatch, though. It's been a while .

Chaotic Good

I'd say so overall, yes. I may be a bit spacey and off in my own little world sometimes, but if I know something's important I'll make sure it's taken care of.

Wise