Why Sunset is a much better character than Starlight could ever hope to be

[Dawn-Sunlight 1,228]

Sorry if this comes out as more of a rant.

The age-old debate.  Is Sunset Shimmer better than Starlight Glimmer, or is Starlight Glimmer better than Sunset Shimmer?  But, is this even a contest?  As far as I'm concerned, Sunset Shimmer is best character period in MLP and Starlight would be hovering around a top 10 worst characters list.  Sunset always gets the best stories, songs, you name it. The best MLP movies are Rainbow Rocks, where she gets so much character growth, and Forgotten Friendship, which is her first solo movie(finally! ). But I feel like she doesn't get as much love for her villain time as she should. Have you seen the faces Sunset makes?! She is good at everything she does, and she so deserves at this point to be an alicorn princess. Why Hasbro decided to make Sunset start sharing the spotlight with SCITWI, of all characters, I have no idea. The fact that she is confined to EQG is kind of annoying, too. I think that it's understandable to like Twilight Sparkle a little more than Sunset, but I will never understand the weirdos who think that Sunset Shimmer is a horrible character, or that SciTwi is a better character. Sunset Shimmer is cute, awesome, underrated(mostly villain form for this one, but a little of regular Sunset Shimmer too.) If you actually take the time to look at what Sunset was doing, you realize her plans were BRILLIANT. And it was all without using any violence(excluding the scene at the end with Twilight's crown, and that was only because the rest of the main 5 were going on and on about how great the person who she was trying to beat and who was also a princess, the thing Sunset wanted to be from the start, was and all her other plans had failed, so she was frustrated and kind of desperate)! For instance, she took the time to break up the human 5's friendship because Rarity ran against her for the Princess of the Spring Fling, and she wanted to reassert her dominance, so she tortured Rarity both with her knowing it and not knowing it. This was all in preparation for when the contest actually mattered; she was trying to get rid of any opposition before the fact. Then came her redemption. Sunset suffered consequences(rebuilding the front of the school, which she had destroyed), and also didn't immediately get forgiven by everyone and their grandma. She literally got the best EQG movie yet for her redemption arc, and is a far more funny and enjoyable character than the clone of Twilight(her looks) and Sunset(her arc). If you don't know who I'm referring too, you've been living under a bigger rock than the person who didn't know about the background six until about half a year ago(me). Another thing about Sunset: in Forgotten Friendship(second-best EQG movie), Sunset leaps in front of the memory stone's magic beam to save her friends from losing their memories. This is the character who deserves to be the Princess of Friendship's prodigy, and frankly, even an alicorn herself.  She can harness the elements of magic herself and fight a raging she-demon to save everyone else. She can sing a very inspirational song about how your past mistakes do not define you, it's what you do to fix those mistakes and earn forgiveness that counts, and grow phoenix wings from just singing the song with none of her friends even around! Considering Sunset Shimmer is my favorite character, I could go on and on about how great she is, but I should probably say why Starlight is a bad character. Her time as a villain is 1: Requiring everypony else to not have a single functional brain cell in their body in her town, and 2: Requiring the story to be artificially slanted in her favor and for her to have plot armor so she can fight Twilight to a standstill. Than, her redemption arc(which wasn't an arc at all) was very rushed. Her reason for being a villain was because her friend moved away, something that many people have experienced. And this has already been done before, except Apple Bloom, whose friendship with Twist effectively ended when Twist got her cutie mark before Apple Bloom, didn't try to immediately burn down the world. She made new friends. And Starlight suffers absolutely no consequences for her horrible actions, instead being able to stay in the castle and become best friends with the saviors of Equestria, as well as become the Princess of Friendship's prodigy, and is shown no degree of mistrust, not even by the ponies in her own village, who forgive her in less than 30 seconds. She is way more powerful than she should be, and as far as we know, has had absolutely no magic training under somepony like Celestia or anything. She's just special because she's special. Also, here's a link to a website, it's not mine, but I thought it was amazing and it helps my argument about Sunset Shimmer because it shows she wasn't just a cliche villain. Here's the link, https://theentertainmentnut.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/an-animated-dissection-thoughts-on-equestria-girls-sunset-shimmer/, I hope I'm giving credit to the right group or person, but I think this website was made by The Entertainment Nut.  At this point, as we are on the 200th episode of MLP, I think it wouldn't be too much to ask that we Sunset fans get to play Where's Sunset? at least once, considering you, Hasbro, did that for a character that was the blandest, worst example of fan-pandering I've ever seen, Muffin.  And stop shoving Cunty Mc. Purple into our faces at every two steps like caves in Pokemon do with Zubat, or the people who still think Starlight's an amazingly awful character will never change their minds. If your going to make a clone of the main character and the best character in the series, at least have the decency to make her a good character and not just a bad awful Twilight/Sunset clone.  I'm outraged that Hasbro shoves Starlight into the faces of people who watch the show, yet apparently is too scared to put the best character, and a fan-favorite, into a background cameo?! Starlight literally has to have everypony else holding a stupid ball so that she can be the "special hero" who gets to save the day, and she hasn't changed one bit. Her biggest problem was that she really overreacted to every little thing that happened to her, and she didn't stop or change this behavior after becoming "reformed".  The main 5 are disorganized? Starlight mind-controls them against their will. The Princesses are fighting and not getting along? Starlight switches their cutie marks and throws the kingdom into chaos. Trixie accidentally teleports the map somewhere else while doing magic practice with Starlight? Starlight decides to not tell Trixie how she feels because she thinks Trixie will not want be her friend anymore, and also thinks that Twilight will be mad at her for eternity and kick her out if she can't find the map. One of the changelings is finding it hard to adjust to a new lifestyle from the one he was raised with?  Starlight sets a monster on the hive. Twilight gets her school shut down because she and the rest of the main 5 were terrible teachers and couldn't run the school well? Starlight tells Twilight to completely disregard the rules. Discord is being Discord? Starlight almost murders him, even if it was just by accident. Trixie and Starlight's road trip is experiencing bumpy bumps because Trixie's wagon isn't built for two ponies and a full load of magical artifacts? Starlight shows absolutely no regard for Trixie's things or feelings and simply trades her wagon away, and only comes back when she realizes she can't pull the wagon by herself.  Seeing a pattern? These are all things Starlight either has no control over, or are relatively small or silly things, yet she reacts in a very over-reactive way to each one. One last thing. Starlight is constantly moping, and constantly feeling sorry for herself. Hasbro has been doing better with this recently, but because there is no outside force causing conflict, there has to be internal conflict, which amounts to a personality of "I'm very sorry for what I did". Sunset still feels guilty about what she did as a villain, but she's dealing with her problems in a helpful organic way, and the viewer isn't treated to endless rounds of "Oh my gosh, I did something bad! . .  How will I ever be forgiven for the bad thing I did? How could I? I must make up for it." Honestly, I like external conflict a lot better than internal conflict, as too much internal conflict can make the character seem very insecure and kind of unlikable, unless there is an outside threat that is intentionally using the main character's internal struggle to their advantage, such as the Dazzlings in Rainbow Rocks. So yeh, that pretty much sums up why Sunset would have been better to have in the MLP world instead of Starlight. Of course, I know many people won't bother to read the whole thing, as the people who agree with me will be jumping up and down, doing their happy dances after the first two sentences, and the people who don't agree with me will be running to the comments section after the first two sentences to yell at me in computer language and give extremely bad reasons that I can easily counter about why my opinion is wrong and why I'm a horrible person for telling them they're wrong and blah blah blah.  Although feel free to try and contradict my reasons in a respectful manner and/or try and come up with reasons I'm wrong and we can try and see who makes the better argument. I'm not against hearing other people's opinions, as long as they are well thought-out and nuanced.

[KH7672 1,604]

2 hours ago, Dawn-Sunlight said:

Although feel free to try and contradict my reasons in a respectful manner and/or try and come up with reasons I'm wrong and we can try and see who makes the better argument. I'm not against hearing other people's opinions, as long as they are well thought-out and nuanced.

Oh yeah

  

this is gonna be good.

Note I'm not even going to try to debate Sunset vs. Starlight.  I have no issues with you liking Sunset more by all means.  What I will touch on is every way you want to convey Starlight is a bad character, because at the end of the day Sunset's her own character and Starlight's her own character good enough by their own separate reasons.

2 hours ago, Dawn-Sunlight said:

...but I should probably say why Starlight is a bad character. Her time as a villain is 1: Requiring everypony else to not have a single functional brain cell in their body in her town, and 2: Requiring the story to be artificially slanted in her favor and for her to have plot armor so she can fight Twilight to a standstill.

Starting with this, I question what your beef with the town even is.  What do you mean they're too dumb enough, what that they fell for her philosophy.  Why wouldn't they they were ponies that were travelling the wilderness and happened upon a unicorn creating what she deemed to be the perfect town.  Not even thinking about why they would be travelling out there in the first place, the premiere shows how persuasive and charismatic Starlight can be.  That was her whole appeal as a villain and why people later on were upset that the potential of her villainous ways were not explored fully but I need not get into that yet.

For your second point she can fight Twilight to a stand still because she has the upper hand through the  entire episode.  She concocted the time travel plan so of course she would know the ins and outs of it.  All she has to do is disrupt the past in any way that's it, meanwhile Twilight has to first take in her surroundings, watch out for any and every possible disturbance to the past.  There is so much Twilight needs to keep account of along with also, having to cast magic to time travel every time. We follow Twilight (and Spike) in the finale, because she is not being affected by the change in timelines and instead is the observer.  Do you know who is not affected by the timelines, Starlight.  This is why she is confused when she is taken to the wasteland future.  The time spell has a fail safe in it: 

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Sorry to disappoint you, but I created that spell to send myself back in time. So even when you cast it, I still get sent back here.

Starlight is simply whisked back to past every time the spell is cast and she knows it and she is prepared for it, because she made it.  Twilight is not prepared for anything until she takes a look at her surroundings.  As for battle, why is it hard to believe Starlight may have more raw magic than Twilight.  Being the element of Magic doesn't mean nopony is stronger than her, it means they don't have as good as a grasp on magic and friendship as she does, which is still true.  Plus, I would like you to point me to a time when Twilight had proficient combat skills, skills that Starlight could have easily been honing in all the time she was watching Twilight (and by Starlight's skills I mean shooting one one laser...oh wow so powerful ) The only time Twilight has competently combated against a villain was Tirek but that was with the combined powers of three other alicorns and having blinding fury inflicted on her, which she could not have with Starlight because well one is that nothing was actually happening to her or the world since she could easily reverse it, and two again she has to take account of all her surroundings at the same time.  The combat in not comparable.

2 hours ago, Dawn-Sunlight said:

Than, her redemption arc(which wasn't an arc at all) was very rushed. Her reason for being a villain was because her friend moved away, something that many people have experienced. And this has already been done before, except Apple Bloom, whose friendship with Twist effectively ended when Twist got her cutie mark before Apple Bloom, didn't try to immediately burn down the world. She made new friends. And Starlight suffers absolutely no consequences for her horrible actions, instead being able to stay in the castle and become best friends with the saviors of Equestria, as well as become the Princess of Friendship's prodigy, and is shown no degree of mistrust, not even by the ponies in her own village, who forgive her in less than 30 seconds.

So let's talk about how short-sighted that analysis is, because for one, you already got her reason for becoming a villain wrong.  It wasn't just Sunburst moving away, it was that he has his cutie mark and she didn't.  Because she didn't have a cutie mark she could not follow him to Celestia's school.  How is she supposed to get her cutie mark? The show has clearly shown you can't force it to come and you can't control when it comes, it just happens when it does, but who knows how long that will be?  You want to compare Apple Bloom, you know why she didn't get depressed when her friend got her cutie mark, because she had Rainbow Dash, Pinkie, and Twilight immediately cheer her up with confidence to at least keep trying, and go to the party.  Who did Starlight have to cheer her up after her stated only friend left.  Well see now that is where I don't have an argument.  Does Starlight's turn make sense because of her character, yes, but is it inherently obvious from the initial flashback, no, and that comes more with execution of the episode.  Maybe we could have used more examples of her suffering, so how truly alone she was to get the message across clearer, but unfortunately the execution decided to falter and that comes mainly from being shown the flashback from her perspective only, a biased perspective that wouldn't open itself up until later on in the series through bits and pieces.

Now for the forgiveness, I assume you are comparing this to how Sunset or Discord weren't immediately trusted.  The difference however comes partly from intention and resolution.  When Sunset and Discord were villains, they purposely went out of their way to mess with other with ill intent to seize power over them.  Starlight on the other hand had misguided intent, she believed what she was doing was right not just for herself but for everypony, with no harm in mind.  Of course I don't discount that harm happened, but for the victims, the reasoning behind the intent is more grey than that of the clearly evil other two.  Not only did the Mane 6 get to talk over what they were going to do with her and let Twilight voice her opinion on why she trusts her, but they also witnessed first hand what not giving that trust does when they saw Discord betray them for Tirek since besides Fluttershy, he didn't really have anyone looking out for him.  They weren't going to make that mistake again, and Twilight assured she would be kept close to be kept and eye on.  As for the village, well unlike the the students at with Sunset who had to deal with her supposed "turn around" immediately, the villagers had a clear passage of time where Starlight was not affecting their livelihood.  They also understand that she betrayed them by lying about the philosophy, however that means that if she abandoned the philosophy and denounced it's validity, wouldn't that be proof enough she has changed and doesn't want to harm them again, coupled with her arrival with the Princess who liberated them, why shouldn't they be trusting of the situation.  The montage itself however does leave more to be desired as I do have to fault the execution again.  As for a stance on punishment....there are already plenty of threads debating this, (some even I've made) so I have nothing to rebuttal that hasn't already been said.

3 hours ago, Dawn-Sunlight said:

And stop shoving Cunty Mc. Purple into our faces at every two steps like caves in Pokemon do with Zubat, or the people who still think Starlight's an amazingly awful character will never change their minds.

Spoiler

 Let me say it didn't even take me until this sentence to figure out you're just regurgitating Lily Orchard's opinion, but I won't judge I love to debate.

 

3 hours ago, Dawn-Sunlight said:

Starlight literally has to have everypony else holding a stupid ball so that she can be the "special hero" who gets to save the day, and she hasn't changed one bit. Her biggest problem was that she really overreacted to every little thing that happened to her, and she didn't stop or change this behavior after becoming "reformed".  The main 5 are disorganized? Starlight mind-controls them against their will. The Princesses are fighting and not getting along? Starlight switches their cutie marks and throws the kingdom into chaos. Trixie accidentally teleports the map somewhere else while doing magic practice with Starlight? Starlight decides to not tell Trixie how she feels because she thinks Trixie will not want be her friend anymore, and also thinks that Twilight will be mad at her for eternity and kick her out if she can't find the map. One of the changelings is finding it hard to adjust to a new lifestyle from the one he was raised with?  Starlight sets a monster on the hive. Twilight gets her school shut down because she and the rest of the main 5 were terrible teachers and couldn't run the school well? Starlight tells Twilight to completely disregard the rules. Discord is being Discord? Starlight almost murders him, even if it was just by accident. Trixie and Starlight's road trip is experiencing bumpy bumps because Trixie's wagon isn't built for two ponies and a full load of magical artifacts? Starlight shows absolutely no regard for Trixie's things or feelings and simply trades her wagon away, and only comes back when she realizes she can't pull the wagon by herself.  Seeing a pattern? These are all things Starlight either has no control over, or are relatively small or silly things, yet she reacts in a very over-reactive way to each one.

Now if you're expecting me to say that Starlight doesn't overreact to situations, well that would be lying, because that is true, however what you are missing is "why she keeps doing it" and it doesn't amount to not learning from it...well at least not intentionally.

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The main 5 are disorganized? Starlight mind-controls them against their will.

Why does she use mind control on them because I can tell you it's not because their disorganized, at least not to a fault of their own.  Starlight incorrectly assumes her friendship lessons are a pass-fail kind of lesson where she must pass what ever her friends want to do, and thinks by completing these activities she will pass and attempts to do them all at once to get it over with not realizing she is overlooking the friend part as she sees the friend as more her way to finish the lesson, and that is wrong.  That is the big take away she gets is that when doing things with friends it's more important to listen and be a part of how the friend will do things instead of trying to do things all herself.  The Mane 5 are not the reason she resorted to magic, her own misunderstanding is what and she learns that.

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The Princesses are fighting and not getting along? Starlight switches their cutie marks and throws the kingdom into chaos.

First I have to ask, what chaos?  The timberwolf thing?  You do realize this same thing would have happened even if she didn't impulsively switch the cutie marks.  I've seen the notion brought up that Starlight could have at least asked to perform a spell on them, taking into account of the observations she has of their behaviors and the fact that she was called to help sort out the fighting, the sisters probably would have agreed, in fact they agree immediately after she explains herself, saying it would give the sisters a chance to see how the other lives which they find agreeable.  Yes the impulsiveness is still there, but this again comes down to why it isn't seen as a problem to the characters because the switch is exactly what they needed to solve the issue.

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Trixie accidentally teleports the map somewhere else while doing magic practice with Starlight? Starlight decides to not tell Trixie how she feels because she thinks Trixie will not want be her friend anymore, and also thinks that Twilight will be mad at her for eternity and kick her out if she can't find the map.

Yes, Trixie is Starlight's first real friend and they have yet to know each others boundaries yet.  Why wouldn't Starlight worry Trixie would react harshly to being called out, since it has never come up before.

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One of the changelings is finding it hard to adjust to a new lifestyle from the one he was raised with?  Starlight sets a monster on the hive.

And Thorax immediately called her out for it and made her come with him to stop the thing.  But okay it's another impulsive mistake and one that actually would have done great harm if things did not turn out as well, so the problem is that things did turn out fine in the end and so then it harder to see the downside to such a decision for her.  What needs to happen is for her to be in the wrong and to stay in the wrong until she herself fixes it and what do you know:

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Discord is being Discord? Starlight almost murders him, even if it was just by accident.

Discord was not being "just Discord" because he was selfishly taking out his frustration on Twilight and later Starlight on the students causing chaos and fright to those parties not involved in his problem and to hand wave that kind of behavior is just condoning his excuses, and maybe Starlight does that too in the end, but that is after understanding her impulsive actions against him were also wrong, and here we finally have Starlight making an impulsive decision with magic and learning from it, but taking the time to actually listen.  Oh yeah and people need to stop referring to this as murder.  There was no threat on Discords life at all from any perspective, end of story.  Now with that side we need to also see what happens when she makes a decision without magic.

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Trixie and Starlight's road trip is experiencing bumpy bumps because Trixie's wagon isn't built for two ponies and a full load of magical artifacts? Starlight shows absolutely no regard for Trixie's things or feelings and simply trades her wagon away, and only comes back when she realizes she can't pull the wagon by herself.  

One she just trades her wagon, not her magical artifacts, they are clearly seen being loaded into the new wagon, but the other thing is before Trixie sees it, Starlight absolutely was taking into account of her feelings towards the sleeping arrangements.  She noticed not only is the small wagon making it difficult to sleep together, but that she didn't want to throw out anything to sleep better, instead opting to throw herself out in the end.  Starlight sees this as Trixie making rash decisions so they can both sleep comfortably apart, which is troubling signs of a fraying friendship so Starlight does the same thing and finds more comfortable sleeping arrangements for them together to bring the friendship back and she does it without consulting just to show how good of a friend she is to Trixie that Trixie doesn't even need to say anything for her to understand...well at least think she understands,

Now everything I just said was Starlight's reasoning behind what she did, but it should not be taken as justification for what she did because in the end what she did was wrong.  And the thing about Starlight is she is bullheaded when it comes to her decisions, and even after Trixie cries about it, Starlight stubbornly sticks to her decision because she believes she is a good friend by what she did and will hear nothing against.  This mindset she is in right now THAT is what causes her to see her error.  She does not turn around because the wagon is "too heavy" because if that were the case why'd she keep going.  No she turned around after seeing the mailpony friends and realizing the decision she made was not worth sticking by if it meant losing her friend that she wanted to share this journey with.  She returns because she understands what she did was wrong and why she was a bad friend to Trixie because of it when she didn't consult her first.

4 hours ago, Dawn-Sunlight said:

One last thing. Starlight is constantly moping, and constantly feeling sorry for herself. Hasbro has been doing better with this recently, but because there is no outside force causing conflict, there has to be internal conflict, which amounts to a personality of "I'm very sorry for what I did". Sunset still feels guilty about what she did as a villain, but she's dealing with her problems in a helpful organic way, and the viewer isn't treated to endless rounds of "Oh my gosh, I did something bad! . .  How will I ever be forgiven for the bad thing I did? How could I? I must make up for it." Honestly, I like external conflict a lot better than internal conflict, as too much internal conflict can make the character seem very insecure and kind of unlikable, unless there is an outside threat that is intentionally using the main character's internal struggle to their advantage, such as the Dazzlings in Rainbow Rocks.

With this last part I'm not even certain where this specific internal conflict comes from.  I did see it some in Season 6 mainly in the premiere and the finale of course brought upon by outside sources of reuniting with Sunburst and the possibility of leading again not just her village but the rescue team of her, Trixie, Thorax, and Discord.  As for other episode, in "Every Little Thing She Does" she apologizes, does not ask or expect to be forgiven, does not even inquire how to make up for it.  She just apologizes sincerely and then goes to clean up her mess she made, not even implying they hold any responsibility on it.  It is that maturity in her delivery that makes the Mane 5 considering helping her, because they wanted to, not because wanted them to."  "A Royal Problem's" internal conflict actually comes more from Twilight's outside source by pressing her about how disastrous the outcome could theoretically be (even though it wouldn't, it's why it's just a nightmare).  "Road to Friendship" there's barely any internal conflict in fact that's for a reason because we are supposed to see Starlight in the wrong and giving her internal conflict would risk making her too sympathetic. 

4 hours ago, Dawn-Sunlight said:

So yeh, that pretty much sums up why Sunset would have been better to have in the MLP world instead of Starlight.

And this sums up my rebuttals to all of your statements.  If you really think Sunset should be in MLP then you really don't understand what purpose she actually brings to Equestria Girls and how putting her in Starlight's role defeats it and how Starlight's own character purpose is singled out for her and her alone.

[ShootingStar159 2,155]

This looks like it’s been copied word for word from one of Lily Peet’s regurgitations. I don’t understand how you can expect everyone to be “respectful” of this when it’s written with zero respect for anyone who holds even a slightly different opinion.

[Misty Shadow 7,086]

Alternate title, "Why Any Brony Reviewer is a Much Better Source of Inspiration Than Lily Orchard Could Ever Hope to Be". 

41 minutes ago, KH7672 said:

And stop shoving Cunty Mc. Purple into our faces at every two steps like caves in Pokemon do with Zubat, or the people who still think Starlight's an amazingly awful character will never change their minds.

I see...I really do see...and it's really not pretty. 

[RDDash 18,867]

Starlight Glimmer is amazing and she is rarely in the show right now, and writers are now "punishing" her right now because she is working at the school of friendship and I am not going to read that wall of text that you just posted. 

[Ashen Pathfinder 16,152]

Locking this; there is no potential for civil discussion or discourse here.